Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 275: The Battle of One Hundred in the Hand

Transcript

Ep. 275: The Battle of One Hundred in the Hand · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening. Don't podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: You can't predict anything presented by first light. Go farther,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: stay longer. Alright, I want to. I want everybody to listen,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: really like, what's this noise that's satisfying? Don't think I'm
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: actually holding the firearms. I don't think the federal government
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: regards these his firearms different. I think it's like a
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: different set of rules. It's a it's a repple covered.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: We're visiting with Michael Pump, who wrote The Revenant um
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and as a forthcoming book. No, it's now, yes. Now.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: The last time Michael punk was on, he teased his
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: next book, which is called Ridgeline, and he was being uh,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: he was being diplomatic but also a good salesman and
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: didn't like lay the whole thing out, save something for
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: later about Ridgeline. UM. And so he's here to talk
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: with us about Ridgeline. And he brought a couple of
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: show and tell pieces and arrow uh circa. I don't know,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: is it can you get specific? Uh? Not too specific.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: It's I think it's designed to look like the arrows
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: that they would have had in the eighteen sixties, for example.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And I think it's probably pretty accurate. It's got a
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: a manufactured metal arrowhead, which would be accurate for that
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: era steel trade point I was here and referred to exactly,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: but otherwise I think it was there was an attempt
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: made to use the traditional style of building the arrow.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and this year pistol, that pistol which would
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: have been comfortable to the ones used by the officers
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and non commissioned officers and non commission officers in the
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: in the infantry or in the caffree especially, And it's
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a it's a replica of an eighteen fifty one thirty
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: six caliber Colt. Shall shoots thirty six caliber lead ball
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: out of it. That's right. If I was gonna like
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: line up guns that I if I had to get
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: hit by one, I don't know, I wouldn't be like,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't relish getting hit by this one. But there's
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: worst things to get hit by. Well, they by the
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: time they got around to the to the Colt forty five,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: they had decided that they should up the caliber of
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: the caliber and they went from thirty powder charge. I
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: would guess, but there's something, Um, yeah, there's something about
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: I can't remember what it is, but there's something about
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: these where they're not quite firearms that's interesting. And I
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: think you can order them the mail. It doesn't need
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: to go through Uh, don't take my word for it,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm like. I think you can order
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: one of the he's in the mail and just shows
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: up at your house, doesn't need to go through an FFL.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know the answer. I'm not gonna argue with you.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: We'll look it up till else you're doing. I believe
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that's the pistol carried by wild Bill Hiccock and in
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: his hand. I think he was definitely a firearm and
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: I would not have wanted to be on the receiving
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: end of of him. No, did you notice? And um,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: did you watch the ball? The buster scrugs? You don't
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: watch that, No, dude, it's never check it out. It's
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: funny's he's Buster scrug sits down to a card game
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and there's a guy that he sits down to a
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: card game and he wants to get dealt in, but
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: some guy has just left and they're like, no, you
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: gotta play that hand, and he's like, I don't want
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to play that hand, and he takes a look and
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: it's aces and eights dead man's hand. And then later
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: that day yeah yeah, but it wasn't even dealt to him.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: He just sat down at the table and peaked at
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: aces and eights and that's all. It's all rushing a
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: lot more than the writer. This gentleman here, Um, how
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: much this stuff is still active? So you're a writer?
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Are you still you're still a lawyer? Do you keep
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: like up on lawyer business? Are you supposed to send
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: in a check or anything? Every day? I sent in
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: a check in order to keep up my inactive bar
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: status mostly, so that's what you maintain. Yeah, I'm not.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I'm not a practicing lawyer. But it's like, it's not
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: once a lawyer, always a lawyer. Well, I don't know,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: it's not once a member of the bar, always a
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: member of the bar. You've got to keep up your
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: bar membership mostly by paying dues and not taking additional testing.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Thank god no, because I wouldn't do that again. So
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: but you do keep it, You do keep going. You
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: can't fall off for twenty years and decided to send
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: in a check and resume or can you. I don't.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It's a different state by state. Every state regulates their lawyers,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: and honestly, I haven't kept track of it because I
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: hope not to ever be a practicing lawyer again. Do
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: you do your own contracts stupidly because you'll you'll review
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of your own book contract. Yeah, but I've stopped doing
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: that more and more because I am I'm both uh
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: dumb and thinking I know enough to to look at
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: him and cheap enough that I don't want to pay
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: a lawyer. And I've gotten a little bit smart about
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: that over the years and started paying somebody to look
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: at him, which has worked out well for me. Um,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: I was gonna tell your story was just too complicated
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: in her mind. Used to being an ambassador, former US
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Trade rep and then former ambassador to the World Trade Organization.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: It was I was the deputy U. S. Trade Representative,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: part of an agency called the US on the opposite
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: of the U. S Trade Representative, and at that same
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: job involved being the US Ambassador to the World Trade
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Organization in Geneva. So that was kind of a two
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: fer when you did that that you have to live
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: in Geneva. I did for six years. Oh here we
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: talking about that? Yea, so it was we We moved
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: to Montana in two thousand and three. I was born
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: and raised in Wyoming and then lived out east for
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: a while. I went to school out there, came back
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: to Montana after I wrote The Revenant. That's when I
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: quit my law firm job. Is after we sold The Revenant,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I decided to come out live in the West and
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: be a writer back home. Yeah, and uh, my wife
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: is my wife, Tracy is from Livingston, Montana. I grew
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: up in Wyoming. We decided for a number of years
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: between Wyoming and Montana and ended up in Missoula. When
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you were in Wyoming, you were still in the yellow
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Stone Basin, right, Well, I was born in the Big
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Horn Basin in Lovell, Wyoming and lived there. Tell about
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: third grade, and that still counsels the Elstone Basin. True,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: true enough, I think if it is as Big Horn Basin. Um.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: But I want to say you you because you were.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: You were in the sort of broader drainage of where
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: your book takes place, for sure, the other side of
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: the Big Horns, because the powder rivers on the eastern
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: side of the Big Horns but uh, levels on the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: western side. But I looked up as a boy at
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the Big Horn Mountains and those were kind of the
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: the mountains that uh sparked my initial imagination about all
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: things Western Mountain related. Uh, we're gonna get into Ridgeline
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: real deep. But it uh takes place at the what's
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the closest town, the Fort Fetterman. Yeah, today it's uh,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the site of Fort Fetterman and the battlefield are between
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Sheridan and Buffalo. Was I telling you the story about
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: something I knew from that area? Who? When I mentioned
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the Fetterman massacre fight? I don't think you told me
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: that he's like oh brother. Every year in school? Yeah that.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Now for the field trip, well, in Level we would
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: go over to the Cody Museum Cody. Our field trip
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: every year was to Cody. But of course that museum
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: if you people haven't been there, is one of the
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: there's three museums and Cody and they're some of the
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Their really kind of Smithsonian quality museums are unbelievable. And
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: that was another thing that really sparked my imagination as
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: a boy, including the original painting of Custer's Last Stand
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: that they have there by the German duter by the No,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: it's by well, it's by Paxson. He's uh, the artist's
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: name is Paxson. I don't know about his background. He
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: was like the guy that you know, the famous like
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: anheuser Busch representatives. It's a different one that was German.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Well wait, no it's not. Um, I think it may
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: be a slightly different one. It looks it's a it's
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: kind of similar layout. And you know the one called
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: after the fight? Um, is that the one that's in
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: on the battlefield side. Yeah, it's in the Olive. There's
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: the one in the Olive and Miles City where GOLs
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: mccraid eyes I think, and um and people like right
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: on it, gff. I've thought many times about going in
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: there and just trying to strike a deal with them
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and get that Damn. I want the whole wall. I like,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: I'll cut the wall out, put a new wall in.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: But it's it's their massacrerent Is, they're mutilating the it's
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the it's a painting of of them ransacking the battle
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: site right right. It's a phenomenal painting there looking it's
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: like you know, like people have written on there, like
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: for a good time called Jesse. You know the one
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: that was in Uh. I think you're right. It's the
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: packs and one that was a Budweiser commercial in bars
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: for decades at the in the last quarter of the
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: of the century, along along with the buffalo. Look that
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: up a mounted buffalo head. I can answer the other
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: thing we're talking about. So, antique firearms and replicas of
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: antique firearms do not fall under the National Firearms Act,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: even if manufactured after Some Modern versions of flint locks, matchlocks,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and percussion fired guns do not require the involvement of
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: an FFL. Told you Bush like Ann Heuser Busch bought
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Custers last fight. The packing win are in different one
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: trying to find out they hung it all over bars
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and everything. No, Cassily Adams. Okay, so I'm looking at
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: right now. You know a guy named Curly that fought
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: in the fight, Uh, one of the Scouts of Custer. Yeah, okay,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: here's the I know we're not here to talk about
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Custer battlefield, but there's an interesting story about this dude.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Is that Curly was a crow. Curly was a crow scout.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Is he in the photo with the Grizzly? No, that
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: was Dull knife. That was a guy that was killed.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I think I think that guy was killed and it
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: rattled not Custer, but rattled one of Custer's guys. I
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: think he got shot in the head very early on
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: as they were writing into the camp. Yeah, and like
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: his some of his according to Son of the Morning Star,
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I think some of his brain matters splattered on an
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: officer and the officer never quite got back to where
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: he needed to get mentally. Curly either. Here's why there's
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: like a lot of questions about so the Anheuser Busch
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: buys his painting called Custer's Last Fight, and it was
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: based on a crow scout named Curly's description of the battle.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: I gathered there's like a little uh debate about whether
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Curly was there or not. Some people say that see
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: some of his re scouts and stuff, like did they
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: knew what was going to happen the next day and
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: he did like a like a death ceremony. They knew
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: what was coming and Custer got pished off. They were uh,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: you know, not all in or yeah, they were like, yeah,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: this isn't right. And some people are reportedly skinnied out
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: the night before. Curly claims to have survived that he
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: was at the battle and got away and he led him.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: He later met that guy gaul Um, a Sue warrior
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: named gaul and gall said to him, Um, you must
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: have turned into a bird that day, because that's the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: only way you got out of there. Like, wasn't buying
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: it that he had escaped. But um, don't we talking
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: about though? Uh? We were talking about the painting, the
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: paction painting, and yeah, go ahead, Well I was just
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: what I was asking about it. I think I was
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: saying that we were talking about field trips as as
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: a kid, and that paction painting at the of the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Custom Battle just really fueled my boyhood imagination of that
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: whole era. And yeah, and that museum, those museums are
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: in Cody or unbelievable. It's kind of a little envious
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: that of being able to, you know, to grow up
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: like really amused or you know, enthralled by Mountain men
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: and the Indian Wars and to actually live there, because
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: you know, if you're living in West Michigan and that's
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: all you can think about, it's just all is very drafts.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Well there was that was a cool thing growing up
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: in Wyoming, and in fact, There was an old lady
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: that lived next door to me when I was a
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: boy in Level. Her name was Mrs Weathersby, and she
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: was ninety years old, so this was in you know,
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, and she was the lady in the
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: neighborhood who handed out vanilla way for cookies to the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: kids and told stories about you know, her life, and
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: she remembered as a as a little girl. In Level, Wyoming,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a mountain man named John Blue riding out of the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Big Horn Mountains twice a year into Level, Wyoming to
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: to do his twice a year shopping before he you know, requisitor,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: you know, stocked up and went back out to his
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: cabin in the Big Horns. So I love that, even
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: in my lifetime, I can almost touch some of those
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: people who lived that. And that's an amazing thing about
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: that history is it's it's not that long ago, for sure,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: if you if it was fresher one year in some
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: of these areas that haven't been they haven't had all
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the subsequent stories overlaid the landscape too, you know, And
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the landscape in some of these places hasn't changed that much.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: And I mean that's one of the things I love
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: about the Fetterman Fight is compared to the Custer Battlefield.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And I love the Custer Battlefield. It's it's haunting and
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: amazing and a cool place to visit. But that valley
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: has changed a lot more than the valley where the
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: Fetterman Fight took place, and there's just a lot more
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: people that visited. One of the things I love about
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the Fetterman Battlefield is a lot of days you can
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: go out there and wander the battlefield miles of it
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: and not see any other people, and so it's really
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: it's not hard to imagine at all, and it's it's
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: it's a cool place I went to some of the
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I've ever told you. But for a while I was
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: going to do a book about the Nez Perce War
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: me too. Yeah, I did a lot of traveling for
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: I blew a whole summer on the man. Yeah. I
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: was already to write that book when I got the
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: assettership and had to abandon the book because I knew
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: that I was not gonna be able to finish it.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: So that was And then you know, when when he surrendered,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: you know his famous I will fight no more forever,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: which may or may not have what he said I was.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I was good. I was walking the whole damn thing.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I was gonna walk that wholes and I in my
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: path with a I had a backpack and a pack
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: raft when I started out and did quite a bit
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: of it, I was gonna call my book I will
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: walk no More forever. But well, that'd be the way
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: to do. But I eventually just lost the thread and
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: gave up on it. But either way, I want a
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: lot of those battle sites, and they're not even like
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: very effect. They're not even really interpreted. So you gotta
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: kind of look at you gotta sort of play historian
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: at the sites and be like, if that's the mile
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: they're talking about, or if that's the bridge they're talking about.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I'm sure someone knows, But but a little big horn
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: is so well interpreted. Yeah, And actually the Feederman Battlefield
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: is a is a nice combination of being the way
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: that it was but having some interpretive guides. And I
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: think the State away Aming has done a pretty good
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: job on those guides, including by the way, giving both
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: a this the U. S. Soldier perspective and also the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: native perspective in terms of how they were looking at it,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: and so it's it's it's pretty cool that they've managed
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: to mix it in, but still there's a lot of
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: area for speculation about where specific things might have happened,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: and there's just a lot that is not really known
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day about the battle itself.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Once they rode over that ridgeline, none of the none
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: of the whites survived, and uh, there are lots of
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: interesting accounts, uh from from Native participants, but they're they're
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: not all consistent, and so there's just a lot of
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: room for speculation. We know how it ended, but in
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: terms of what it was, I thought it was perfect
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: for for a novel because there there is a lot
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: we don't know, and so you've kind of got the
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: major mile posts there, but there's it was there was
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: plenty of space to kind of fill in what people
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: were thinking, you know, what specific things were happening in
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: over the course of the battle, and it it just
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: made it perfect I thought for fiction. Okay, let's let
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: it hang there for a minute, because I gotta we
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: gotta cover a couple of things. But well, nor thing,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: are you do you still do the public policy for Amazon?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I do? How did you do do that? Plus all this well,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: uh in part because I've got kids in college, you know,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: about making a living as a as a writer, which
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: is uh up and down. Um, but uh yeah it
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: was really good every couple of years. The publishing industry
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: is not the fastest industry in in America, and so
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: things things that wind slowly, even if you've got a
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: bit of a tail wind. But so yeah, I still
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: have a day day job for Amazon Web Services. Michael,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: I hope you don't take offense this and it's a compliment.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Really get I get worried about the interest me where
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: my interest style. You know, I know how this show works.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: There's usually an ambush your two so so here here
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: it comes. I mean, I mean this is for your
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: title writer, lawyer, policy analyst, US Trade rip. You look
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: exactly like how I would imagine someone with those titles
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: to look. It's perfect, absolutely perfect, no idea what them
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: for the ace don't like glass? Yeah, like Phil looks
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: like an audio engineer, but I think Michael looks even
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: more like a writer, lawyer, policy analyst in US trade REP.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know how to take that,
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: but I thank you. It's a comp you could picture
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: him like a menal guy yelling at to get out
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: of his yard. It's really it's really satisfying with those titles.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: How old are you? We're probably the same. I'm fifty six.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Oh no, you got a lot of yours. But I'm
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: glad that you saw were the same? You tell are
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: you for seven? Man? I'm a decade older than you? Really,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: spri Man, I'm ship man. I can see him fronting
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: like like an indie folk band, too ye, or yelling
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: at kids a good obviously, Okay, check this out. We
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: got couple we're gonna get back into. We're gonna get
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: back into ridgeline hardcore. We've got a couple of things
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: we gotta go over. Um. I always here about this
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: every now and then, but this is the explain this
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Spencer Brewed X. Yeah, it's the seventeen year hatch and
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: it's coming this year. This has been covered a lot,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: like by every big news source there is, CNN, Fox
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: and we better, we better getting out of it. We
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: have covered it, we covered about two weeks ago. Go ahead,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: play it out. The Brewed X hatches coming and it's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: all these cicadas now, I think, but why is it
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: brewed X. I think I think there's like, yeah, I
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: think there's like brewed x I, brewed X, brewed x I.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: I like this is the numerals, So I got you.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: So this is like a generation whatever. This is like
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: a generation of them that they've been hanging out in
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the ground as little eggs for seventeen years. And I
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: think something that other outlets have done a poor job
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: of describing is where exactly it takes place at When
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: national news sources are covering, it's like, oh man, there's
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: gonna be the whole country. You're like the whole continent.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: That's not really the reality, though. It's basically, like my understanding,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: pretty much every state that touches Kentucky and Tennessee, which
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: is a lot of them, but that that region has
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: the brewed X hatch coming um and this is really
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: good for fish and really good for turkeys. Millions per
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: acre from New York to Georgia and west of the Mississippi,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the epicenter of our nation's capital, Washington, d c. Cicadas
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: per square foot here, it's just expresses what it means
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: for turkeys. Turkeys like to eat them so they don't
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: have to hunt around for food. And then raccoons like
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: to eat them, so they get all gorged up on
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Cicadas don't eat turkey eggs. So if you like to
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: hunt Jake's next year is your year you like to
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: hunt long beards. Three. I think for most folks it
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: was just gonna be really annoying, like trying to drive
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: across a bridge that has a lot of lights on it,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: or trying to play a softball game in June. They're
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: incredibly loud. I like that noise though, Man's it's it's
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: a cool sound, you know, the thing that you um.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: You know, earlier I was talking about how your childhood
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: is better mine. One thing that uh that now like
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: living in the in the arid West. You know, ah,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: when I go back home to Michigan on a summer night,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the cophony of sound at night, tree frogs. But it's
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: just like you go out into a swamp at night
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: and like a canoe and it's it's almost disorienting how
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: loud it is at night there. You just don't have
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: that air and air landing once the once the crickets
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: quiet down, you know, it's pretty quiet. It's just like
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: then the jungle, like you know, the Amazon and stuff.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: It's even more. It's it's almost like you want like
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: shut up, shut up, shut up. Associate for a minute.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: I associate cicadas with anxiety. When I was ar cicada
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: showed up in late summer. UM, so like a mid
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: August you'd start hearing cicadia's at night and it's like,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: damn it, school starting against you. I was going to
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: take a shopping for clo two days they're coming. Uh
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: like nothing good came as you know, uh here at
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: meat eat or we have a very modest vaccination incentive
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: program um hunter Bucks. I was insistent that we have
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: a vaccination incentive program, but it wasn't able to get
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: people rallied and eventually somehow settled at a hunter Bucks.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: Did you did you claim your hunter bus? Yeah, Phil,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's probable. But you send your you send it
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and get your hunter Bucks. Good good, good, good good.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: It's a good program. Uh this but not as good
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: as this one? Well no, you know, maybe dollar for dollar.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: It is like so different people are doing all these
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: different things that get people to get vaccinated. Free donuts,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: free milk shakes, free beer, free lamination of your vaccination card,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: a free ride to get vaccinated. Ohio's launching a million
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: dollar lotto. Oh yeah, they're vaccine there. People are lying
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and curve is just like a straight line million bucks man.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: But to enter, you gotta get vaccinated. Uh, Maine, this
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: is great. Maine does fish. You get a fishing license,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: if you get vaccinated, you get a hunting license. If
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: you get vaccinated, you can get a park pass. If
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: you get vaccinated, you get a main state park day pass.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Who the hell get the day pass? And you can
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: just get the pass well once a wildlife park pass.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: The other one is a state park day pass. Get
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: an ll being gift card, and then uh some other
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: things that really care about baseball tickets in a race
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: car ticket. Here's what this again is a little bit
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: blown out of proportion. There's about a hundred and sixty
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: thousand licensed hunters in Maine and they are paying for
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: up to five thousands of these, so that doesn't go
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: very far. So is it kind of like a hurry
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: up and get years now kind of thing or hoping
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: you don't look in at the fine print? Right? I
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: saw you know listeners sent this in was talking about
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: you're you're you said you're gonna deprive Maine of You're
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: gonna deprive Mains Fish and Game Agency of three hundred
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars in license sales. But I don't really understand
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: that because they're buying the licenses. It's I mean, it
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: says the main Department of Health and Human Services will
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: purchase up to five thousand hunting passes license, So I
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: don't think they're depriving the state agency of all that revenue.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: So I think that his the listeners great, But then
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: he he also points out it's not a great because
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: he points out this COVID was so overwhelmingly positive for
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: Pittman Robertson funding because early on everyone was getting armed
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: up two get their neighbors whatever they were gonna do
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: early in the pandemic. And then everybody started going out
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: hunting and shooting all the time, and buying all kinds
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: of fishing equipment and hunting equipment and taking up sports
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: shooting because you can just go off by yourself and
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: didn't need to try to go to the whatever hordfest.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Monsters are rock whatever people used to go to. They
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: play outside now and so it's flooded. The Pittman Robertson
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: fun with conservation money. So it's like a you know,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: if they missed out on a few bucks here, it's
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: still unbelievable amounts of firearm industry money that has gone
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: into um, you know from a Pittman Robertson funding standpoint,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: is the good old days of wild byfe funding right
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: now and probably will continue to run that way for
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: a number of years here with a lot of threats
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: against gun ownership, it's not that's not gonna slow down. UM.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: Interested paper came out about mountain lions. Explain this one spencer,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: you're gonna explain stuff. We covered this on our website,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the media dot Com. You can go there and type
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: in study fines Mountain lions have an unexpected predator. To
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: read the whole thing, well, we'll touch you on some
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: of the main points. He wasn't unexpected to me, though
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: the headline didn't ring true to me. I think it's
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: unexpected m especially in like the the abundance of it
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: once once you get into it. That was unexpected. So
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: this study took place in the Greater Yellstone ecosystem in
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: northwestern wyom and about nine square mile area. They generally
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: like when you see the g y e. It's about
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the size of Indiana what they kind of lump in.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: You know, this specific location was selected because the researchers
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: and studying the line population wanted there to both be
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: wolves on the landscape and hunting aloud. Some of the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: studies in the past didn't have both of those factors
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: when they were looking at mountain lion populations, but this
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: had both those criteria. I mean, they wanted to have
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: wolves and human mountain lion hunting in the same area.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: So that's how this area got selected. They noticed between
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: the year two thousand and eight percent decrease in cougar populations.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: To determine this, they use an integrated population model, lion
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Den's abundance estimates for different animals, GPS, and VHF color data.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: So you should take solace like this was very thorough
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: in doing this, and they termed there were three factors
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: that caused the Kouger decline human hunting, wolves, kill and kittens,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and starvation. Now, the lead researcher, Mark L. Brock, said,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the big take home on these papers that wolves had
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: the strongest effect on the survival and the abundance of
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: mountain lions in the system. It's dramatic. Wolves are power
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: on the landscape. We saw cats respond, but we thought
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: it was anecdotal. The strength of the wolves effects surprise
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: every one of us. I've heard a couple of things
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: related to this. Um Remy Warren one time was looking
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: at a lion on a kill and a group of
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: wolves came in and the lions ran up a tree
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: and they ate his thing. That was exactly something that
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: they had observed on the starvation fronto. It was a
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: number of factors. One was the wolves had just knocked
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: back elk populations in general during this period, there was
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: a thirty percent decline in elk population, so that caused
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: some of the starvation. The thing you just mentioned where
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: they had literally run him off kills, um. And then
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the other one, the big one, was they valued the
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: elk population ship lift and where they were hanging out
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: as a seventy shift in the location of the elk herd.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: So the wolves were blocking out from mountain lions in
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: two ways. This is a quote from Mark L. Brock, again,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: the lead researcher. One by moving them into places where
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: mountain lions were uncomfortable, like the wide open and too
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: by literally chasing them off their kills. So now instead
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: of the elk hanging out in the mountains and dark
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: timber wolves pushed them out of there into wide open spaces,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: which was a problem for mountain lions. I read a paper.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I think she's gonna be on soon. One of the
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: people that was involved in this, a carbon Carmen van Biancy.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: She's coming on right, She's she researches predators, and we
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: had her arm. We're talking about this thing where um,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: the presence of wolves on the landscape, how it shifts
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the prey base, you know, saying that it moves like
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: the how how white tails and mule deer. It moves
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: white tails out into more white tailey stuff. They head
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: out in the open, you know, out in the flats
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: more and it moves mule deer into more mule deally stuff.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: They tend to go up, try to go up into
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the more craggy gordy country, and white tails go out
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: and it kind of emptied out more of the mid
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: range habitat. They were linking this. Two hunters reporting seeing
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: like so much fewer game. They were trying to so
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: much fewer game in the presence of wolves and they're
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: talking about that there the hunter. Human hunters haven't adjusted
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: yet to the shift, and they're going where they've always
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: gone to find deer, right, but the deer aren't there anymore.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: The deer moved into new kinds of country. Another thing
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I remember reading about this though, is I can't here
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: and feel speculation or not. But someone was saying, with
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: lions losing their kills all the time, they kill more
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: stuff because they can't camp out on and need it
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: for three or four days. It's like they get it,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: it's gone. They gotta get something that's gone. They gotta
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: get something that's gone. And that when people look at
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: the decline of big game populations in the presence of wolves,
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: that's like another factor is that that they're not able
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: to They don't they're not able to kill something and
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: need it like they normally would, they lose it to quickly.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: So on on the unexpected front here, when we talk
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: about the predation, only about a third of kitten survived
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: until they were six months old, and then only a
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: quarter ever made it to their first birthday. Wolf predation
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: was the primary cause of their death. Now, the lead
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: researcher again said this is the lowest survival rate ever
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: reported for kittens anywhere. Mm hmm uh. And then then
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: he went on to say that the researchers would often
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: find kitten parts strown strown across the ground after wolf
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: care after a wolf kill, which he interpreted as the
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: wolves treating cats as competition, So they weren't just going
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: in there like kill the cats, neath the cats, They're
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: just eliminating them off the landscape. Jordan Stiller is the
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: writer of this article, being a good journalist, reach out
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: to an independent third party, our buddy Jim Haffelfinger, And
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: so what do you think of this study that was
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: done because the study was funded I believe by Panthera,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: which is like the heavy metal band. Yeah, exactly, like
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: a kind of like a cougar conservation group. So Jordan's Jim,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: he said, what do you think of the study? Like,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: did did they get it right? Was this? Uh? Did
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: they have some bias? And Jim said it was interesting
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: and it was solid from a scientific standpoint, and he
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: really appreciated the discussion portion of the paper and how
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: it remained reasonable without speculation. But he said, it's it's
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: really important to um not ignore the thirty percent elk
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: population decrease. That's like the most important part of this
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: whole thing. I don't I don't follow. Jim was saying that, oh,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: that that can't be like emphasized enough. That the wolves
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: knocked back elk herds by and that's food by right,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the starvation element. So what's next? Now? This is maybe
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: just like the new reality for that area wherever wolves
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: and mountain lions exist, and this is probably what it
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: looked like pre European contact, or closer to it than
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: it was before. Overall, this probably is gonna be less
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: cats in the area, but more cats hanging out in
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: open spaces where else where elk currently are um In
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Osborne Russell's journal in the end, he has these little
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: summations of wildlife. He I think. He says that wolverines
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: are common, tells all that about probably pretty effective predators, right,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: and uh, but what happened to them? They like wolves
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: eating all that eating, all all those carcasses, all those
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: just you know, carcasses on the landscape. I don't know
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: send that I did over the half a finger CEO
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: thinks about that. Uh. Spencer keeps reporting on people rescuing
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: birds that die and it's always so sad. So there's
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: always a dark twist ending which like someone rescues a bird,
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: brings it to the rescue place, and they were like
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: the bird died. So our friend Greg Lemon from Montana
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Fish Walting Parks wanted to point out an actual raptor
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: that was saved, happy ending, it's very cute. A rough
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: legged hawk got hit by a car, had blood in
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: both eyes, went to this raptor facility Spencers always talking about,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: and it's fine. And then you'd like to add Spencer
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: and stead of your rafter Dian stories. All the time.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: He was also sharing that that FWP rehabilitates raptors. Oh,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry they did that. I thought they
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: did that in conjunction with the Oh this is their
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: own rehabilitation center, but they rehabilitate is wide. He said, uh,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: like all the way up to bear cubs. And then
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: in this last week they had a house sparrow come
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: in as well. Mm hmm. Really I didn't have beb
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: and it did it? How sparrow died before moment talking
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: boy about that, I don't know. Um, okay, good, Sorry
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: about that. Greg. I didn't mean to take credit away
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: from your outfit. Now this fascinating, Michael, get anything to
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: add by any of this stuff? Are you cool? Cool?
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: These guys did a survey this last thing we're talking about. Uh.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: British international market research and data analytics company did a
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: survey of people, like asking people of like, what wild
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: animals they feel like they could whoop in a fight?
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Just Americans? Just at pent of Americans feel that they'd
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: be bested by a goose in a fight. Um yeah,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: so more most Americans and overwhelming hum. A number of
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Americans things that they would best a rat, slightly fewer
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: people who could best a house cat, slightly fewer could
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: best a dog or goose. Um. More people felt that
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: they could whoop a dog than the eagle. Depends it
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: was a large dog or a medium dog. People are like,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: it goes like I'd be able to whoop a medium dog. Um,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I'd be a little less likely to whoop an eagle,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: but I'd be a lot less likely to whoop a
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: big dog. Yeah, that's a respectively think that they can
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: beat a medium sized dog. This is like without and
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: this is like you know, hand to hand hand. I
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: forgot to say it's hand to hand hand to hand combat.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: A weird one is that people think they could whoop
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: a chimpanzee. And you're not gonna whoop a chimpanzee. Percent
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: of Americans think they could whoop a chimpanzee. Am I
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: reading that right? I need to put my cheats on. Sorry,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: the woman's jumping out of elephant enhand sick? Say? That's
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: six eight percent of Americans they think they could defeat
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: an elephant in handdand grabam by that big snout and
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: pitch that snout. Offer of Americans know they could whoop
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: a wolf. Nine more Americans think they could whoop a
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: crocodile than an elephant. Hmmm. Somehow Americans think they are
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: better off whooping a polar bear than a grizzly and
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: someone that he the person that shared us with his
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: blames the Coca Cola commercials for que defying polar bears.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Ron McGill is that leads you Wild leads zoologists from
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Zoom Miami and he does this weekly hit on a
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: sports show that into and listeners can call in and
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: asking questions, And for the last five years, the most
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: common question he gets is like, what would win and
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: fight between crocodile and polar bear? What would win a
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: fight between a gorilla uh and an elephant? Stuff like
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: that his last hit, which was a few days ago.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: On the episode, they had basically like ran him through
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: this whole list, like what did people get right? What
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: they get wrong? Like what's the best fight from this list?
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: And he had said the thing people got wrong the
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: most be what you said, Steve chimpanzee. He's like you, you
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: you would not stand at change against chimpanzee. They didn't
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: see Planet of the Apes apparently, Yeah, they're like those
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: things play for keeps? Ron, could you like put it
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: in context? Like why couldn't we be the chimpanzee. He's like, okay,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: well a chimpanzee like with with no effort at all,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: can just like rip apart of coconut. He's like, that
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: would be your skull, Like no problem there. They just
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: have like unbelievable strength. You ever see those chimpanzees. This
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: is disgusted. This made me not like chimpanzees. I used
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: to be pro chimpanzee. You ever see that footage them
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: ripping apart that poor little monkey and eating it? Yeah,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: they catch a little monkey and tear them limb from
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: limb and eat them alive. That might have been a
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Nature's Metal. No, it was on something different. I wanted.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I feel like they've shown some grouco chimpanzee eyes and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: genitals immediately, like you're done, and just think about this picture.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: There's a chimpanzee and you clock back and punch him
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: as hard as you can possibly punch them. There's no
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: way you can knock out a chimpanzee. They also asked around,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: They're like, what would what would genuinely be the best
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: fight on the list, Like, what's what's like a fifty
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: fifty fight between the human and one of the animals.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: The only guess what it was? Well, this would be
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: the whooping a medium sized dog. People think they're in
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: he said. Kangaroo, He said, a kangaroo would genuinely be
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: like a good tear down, knockout fight. That's one of
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: my favorite videos of all time. You ever see that
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Australian guy that that cold cock that kangaroo the greatest
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: video ever because he's got his dog's got his dog
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: and they getting they the kangaroo like looks like it's
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: square and off. He squares off in a boxer stands
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: and hits it so hard that it turns its face
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: by degrees. The man hits the kangaroo. What what is
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the situation that they're even like fighting in there? And
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: he comes in a kangaroo. It's the weirdest thing I got.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: So if you go to YouTube or whatever, look up
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: like man punching kangaroo. My kids watch this five thousand times.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: When we got onto it. All of a sudden, the
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: guy bails out of his truck and runs up and
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: there's a kangaroo with its arm around a dog's neck
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: holding the dog standing there holding it under in a headlock.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: A kangaroo or a dog and a headlock. That's pretty sophistically.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: The guy runs up to it, and the kangaroo drops
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: the dog and puts up his dukes. I'm not kidding you,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: puts up his dukes. The guy reflexively goes into a
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: boxer stance they do, like a little pirouette or whatever,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: and he hauls back and hits that kangaroo so hard
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: it turns the gives the kangaroo pretty much whiplash, and
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: then the guy squares off like it's gonna be another punch,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: and then him and his dog walk Away. It's great
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: video's greatest video ever. Rod said, that would be a
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: genuinely good fight and it could go either way. You
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: want to see me watch this transition. Did you know
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: about this transition? It's in here. I may have written
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: it because it's in the graphic. You know what they
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: use the image for the fighting for the six percent
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: of people that think they could whoop a grizzly is
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a scene from the Revenant, and that was based off
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: Michael Punk's pook The Revenant, and he's sitting right here
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: to my left top that huge glass. Was not unarmed though,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: that was one thing. So you had a knife, he
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: had a knife, had a knife. Okay, why here, let's
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: start with this question about No, I can't decide where
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: to start with Ridgeline. I got two you decide, it's uh,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: it's it's guest choice. Give us a quick overview of
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: what happened. Oh can I can I read this? Yes?
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I think well, I want I want to read that.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: What do you call the quote in the beginning of
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: the book here it is, it's it's a beauty, It's
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: a real beauty. The full story of what happened in
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: that brief hour of bloody carnage at high noon under
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: the wintry sky of December one, eighteen sixty six will
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: never be known. It's pretty good leading and as I said,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: kind of opens a door for fiction. Yeah, so tell
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: us what happened that day, and just like roughly, they're
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: gonna get into the lead up, like why that happened,
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: but just give a brief overview and then my next
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: question you can decide which you want to tackle first.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: How do you decide on historical fiction versus nonfiction? So
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: I'll answer I'll answer them in order. Um, briefly, what
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: happened at high noon on that wintry day, wintry day,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: December one, in the Powder River Valley of Wyoming is
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: ten decoys, ten Native American decoys, a mixture of Lakota,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: Cheyenne and Arapaho decoyed a group of cavalry and infantryman
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: out of Fort phil Karney away from the safety of
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the fort. And we're skillful enough as decoys to lead
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: them over a ridgeline ah about two and a half
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: miles away from the They were not supposed to go.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: They were not supposed to go over that, And it
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: turns out for good reason, because on the other side
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: of that ridgeline, very much to their surprise, were is
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: a force probably numbered around two thousand combined Cheyenne, Lakota,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: Arapaho warriors led by Red Cloud, and into that trapped.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: These calvarymen and infantrymen fell and were wiped out to
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: the man men killed. It was the worst, most mostly
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: by earrows. It was the worst defeat in US military
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: history for a decade until the the Battle of the
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Little Big Horn. Mhmm. I don't remember if he mentioned
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: the book, but I've seen elsewhere that the decoys, as
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: part of their strategy, were mooning the U. S soldiers.
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: That's something you found to be true. I've read that before. Um.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure what I think about that, whether that
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: actually happened. I uh, I mean, who knows. They probably
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: were doing a lot of things because they kind of
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: lead the cavalry that was out in front along for
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: quite a distance. You. UM, I'm not sure that that
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: was the it's a good story. I'm not sure that
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: that piece of it actually happened or not. Uh. They
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: certainly were successful in making them angry and getting them
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: to chase uh, and in defiance of direct orders that
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: they had not to go over this particular origin line.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: So whatever they did, it worked, and I kind of
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: play with that in the book. But to your question
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: of why fiction versus nonfiction, UM, I've written both. The
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: This is my second novel. The first novel was The Revenant,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: and Origin Line is the second. And I've written two
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: narrative nonfiction books. And for me, one of the things
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: that made me decide to do a novel versus nonfiction
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: is that I think this is a story where there's
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: so much that is unknown that it really we know
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: a lot about the context, all the things that happened
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: before and after, but when it comes to the battle itself,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of a fair amount of mystery there.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: And it just made it perfect to me for a
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: a a fictionalized version, as opposed to something like the
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: story of the mining disaster and Butte that I wrote about,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: where there were seven daily newspapers in Butte, Montana at
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the time of the disaster, all of which we're covering
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: this incident and government reports about it, etcetera, etcetera. You
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: just had all sorts of of of historical material to
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: work with, where you didn't need as much of the
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: of the fictionalized piece. So that was that was kind
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: of one thing that played into it. I could see
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: that being warranted in this case. I hadn't thought about
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: it that way. Um, particularly if you look at at
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: Crazy Horses involvement. I don't know if you've ever read LARRYM. Merchery,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: there was a series where like novelists would write these
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: I was famous Americans and Larry McMurtry, um, you know,
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: most famous. He wrote Lonesome Dove h He wrote the
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Crazy Horse one, which is very short, very short, and
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: it begins with Larry E. Merchany basis staying I don't know. Well,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: it was like basically it was like I'll tell you
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: what we don't know, and that's kind of what the
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: book called goes like. And there's not even a photograph
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: of Crazy Horse because he never allowed himself to be photographed,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: so unlike a lot of the most famous Native American leaders.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: There are photographs who Red Cloud, for example, there are
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: lots of photographs Crazy Uh sitting bowl. Crazy Horse. There's
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: no there's no photograph. He never allowed himself to be photograph.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: He's so mysterious, very mysterious. They don't they took his body.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: His people took his body. No one knows where they
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: put the body. It's not even clear who stabbed him.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: I think that there's like a lot of what what
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: happened at the time of his death. He was in
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: Nebraska correct, yes, and he was in he was in
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: UH military. He was like under some kind of house arrest.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: He's being returned to UH to confinement reservation and run
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: off to another one in order to take care of
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: his of his wife. He was captured, brought back. He
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: saw that he was going to be imprisoned, and he resisted.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: And the story that ah to me makes I think
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: there's the most support for is that he was grabbed
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: by two Native policemen and then stabbed with a bayonet
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: by a US soldier. I know there was when I've
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: read about it, it was that there is like some
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: historical disagreement about who gave the death blow. But but
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: I remember Ian Frasier writing that um, his disdain for
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the white man was still strong that even after he
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: was stabbed and he was dying, he refused to be
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: laid in the bed exactly. UH. He wanted to lay
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: on the ground and died in the company of his
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: of his father, that that evening after being stabbed, and
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: then presumably somewhere within there his body is hidden. You
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: would you would think that, I mean, I guess, we
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: don't know, but that's what you would think. M hm.
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: So the point being about that is it allows I
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: can see that there's reward and risk and taking the
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: approach to take sure because you're taking a stab at
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: it right and perform stab but it's it's I shouldn't
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: use the word STABBU you stabbed death. You're taking a
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess, yeah, yeah, for sure. And
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: uh and I actually the book doesn't cover that part
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: of Crazy Horses life. It pretty much stops with with
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: the fetterment fight. That doesn't go forward the ten years
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: that personality that you established personality, But for sure, and
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: and and I grapple with that a lot as a
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: as a writer, and I think there's even writing fiction
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: that there's a huge responsibility to get the history right.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: And I take that super seriously. And I think it's
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: especially important today when frankly, I feel like as a
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: as a nation, we're losing our grip on fact versus
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: fiction and veracities. Yeah maybe, um, but I think that
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: as I for the books that I write, I want
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: to not do anything that would lead a reader to
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: a a conclusion that I think is not accurate about
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: what happened historically or about what people were like. And
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: so in writing about Crazy Horse I and all the
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: other characters good and bad, I've had a real sense
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: of responsibility to kind of do the research on the
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: characters in order to kind of have the best sense
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: that I could about what they were like as people,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: and then to write a story. It is consistent with that,
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: even recognizing that you're making up lots of stuff. I mean,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: in a novel, you write about what people are thinking,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: we don't we don't know. You're writing about conversations that
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: they had, we don't know. But I hope that I've
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: done this book in a way that that is true
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: to history and to the characters. In the end, in
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: a secondary I want to get to the sort of
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: the lead up to this fight. But in the end,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: you do like you have some people that you paint
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: as a napped and ye, yes, like I guess not
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: villain isn't the right word, but some of them, yeah,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: I would call him villains. Some real questionable characters in
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: the book, and then in the end you have some
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: notes well that that lay out off the case I
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: lay out your case. I've take an additional step at
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the end of Ridgeline, and I did the same thing
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: at the end of The Revenant, where I have a
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: section that is historical notes and basically any place where
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I explicitly wrote something that I knew was not correct,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: I tell the reader about that, and then I give
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: sources that the reader can can use to go do
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: additional nonfiction reading. And again, I feel like when I
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: read a book or see a movie, I always wonder
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: did that really happen or not? And so at the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: end of my book, I have a section that kind
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: of attempts to answer that question. Sorry. On the media
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: dot Com, we read an article last year called the
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: Genre Revived the New Age of Westerns, and we sort
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: of talked about how there's been a shift like since
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, when Westerns had a lot of clean violence,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: bright colors, gunshots that never bled, and then you get
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: into the nineties and there's like sort of it becomes
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: very action here we and then in like the two thousands,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: and now it's like sort of dark. There's a lot
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: of character development, um, and there's not years much violence,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: and if you are like a violent person, they're like
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: kind of the dumb person when they're loose with gunfire.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: And it's just been like this huge shift over less
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: seventy years and the whole genre of Westerns. Has there
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: been any kind of similar shift with like historical fiction
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: or not. Um, that's a great question. I'm not sure
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: that I can answer it in a very generalized way
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: because I think people write so many different kinds of
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: historical fiction, ranging from stuff that's just barely influenced by history. Too.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: I hope I'm at the other end of the spectrum
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: in terms of wanting to tell a very entertaining story
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: but having it be as true to history as possible.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: So I do think it's interesting how I would say
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: slightly differently in terms of how I would characterize Westerns.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: I think the Western motif is something that's at the
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: core of the American soul, and I think every decade,
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: every generation uses the Western in part to hold the
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: mirror up to the to the era that we live
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: in that they live in in their time, and so
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: fifties westerns reflected that kind of fifties mentality about about
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: good and evil. Seventies western's anti hero. The anti hero
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: during the Vietnam War reflected a much different view of
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: what a hero even was in a Western context. Uh,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: something like a movie like Unforgiven to Me is all
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: about the it's all about violence, and it happened to
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: be at a time a nation in doubt, a nation
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: in doubt. You know, what does the what is the
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: role of violence? What does violence mean? And so I
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: think every every era kind of sees Western takes different
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: lessons from Western history, and I think I do that too.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: So you think historical fiction like sort of follows that
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: same thing a little bit. It's it's a reflection of
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: the era that it comes out, and that I think
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: that probably ends up being true. Is that, Look, we
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: all see the path, we all see everything through our
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: prism of of our present experience. And I think you
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: if you're trying to be true to history, you try
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: and fight against that a little bit because you want
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: to not be completely uh distorted by your your current vision.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: But I think that it's it's tough to get around that.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: When you're developing characters, do you kind of envision them
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: or like feel them yourself, Like what's your process to
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: pick and choose things that maybe in a historical account
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: and meshing that with you know, because you get into
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: kind of like the psychology of who everyone is, how
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: do you feel through that? So, first of all, one
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: of the things I loved about this story is that
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: there's such an incredibly diverse cast. And I mean, The
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: Revenant was really about one guy, Malbia Grizzly, and there's
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: some people who he goes after, but it's really kind
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: of a one man show, which is an interesting survival story.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: This story is has a sprawling cast, and and the West,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: you know, one of the things people don't often realize
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: about the West is just how incredibly diverse it was.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: And uh, you know, even the diversity within the tribes
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: is incredible. Among the Lakota, just in this story, you
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: have the Menacaoju, you have the Oglala. Among the Cheyenne,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: you have the northern and southern Cheyenne, you have the Crow,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: you have the Arapaho, uh. And so there's a huge
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: diversity just with language barriers which you get into, which
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: I had that hadn't occurred to me before. I guess
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: maybe I had just hadn't thought about it. Difficult to
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: communicate and and that's just the tribes. And then you
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: have uh, you know, the role of women in the
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: frontier is a lot more pronounced in this era than
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: than people realize. One of the most important jobs I
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: ever had for my writing career was when I was
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: in high school and college. I worked summers at Fort
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Laramie National Historic Site for the National Park Service and
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: I dressed up. This was the greatest boy job ever.
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: I dressed up every day in eight seventy six cavalry
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: uniform and I uh talked to tourists about the history
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: of the West. Twice a day. We fired in Mountain Howitzer. Um.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: You know, I learned all about the guns. It was.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: It was an incredible job. One of the things I
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: learned in that job. First of all, the US government
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: did not do a very good era job in that
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: era of talking about the role of Native Americans in
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: Western history. One thing they did do a fairly decent
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: job of at that time as they talked about the
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: role of women on a fort, and one of the
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: roles that they talked about in detail was laundresses. Because
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: each one of these forts had a community of women
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: whose job was to do the soldiers laundry, and there
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: was an incredible culture that built up around those women.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: And so in my book I portray one of the characters,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Janie White, who's a laundress at Fort phil Karney in
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six. So in your question was how do
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: you characters? And this one the hard thing was was
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: deciding who not to pick, because there were so many
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: compelling characters to me, Um, you know, none more so
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: than than Crazy Horse, who for the reasons we talked about,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: including the fact that he's such a there's such a
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: an aspect of mystery around him, made him just fascinating
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: to me. The soldiers, there's incredible conflict between the officers,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: between then between the officers and the enlisted men. The
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: soldiers themselves are largely made up of German and Irish
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: immigrants who might have signed up for the army because
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: they want to uh learn how to speak English. For example,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: if you're the Germans and all of a sudden they
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: end up out in this god forsaken Western frontier, surprise, surprise,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: there's women at the ft in eighteen sixty six, both
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: in the form of officers wives because the officers brought
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: their families with them, which is surprising to a lot
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: of people. And Laundre says, I was surprised to read that.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, think about where they're they're sitting
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: in that day, that it's the most dangerous spot on
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: the planet. And these officers are bringing their families with
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: him and all your husbands right out one day and yeah,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: and all these people are interacting with with each other
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: in the midst of this incredibly stressful period in history.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: And to me, that just was inherently dramatic and interesting. Um,
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: have you ever read uh, I can't remember the name,
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: but there's a really good book about there's a history
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: of Afghanistan from the Soviet invasion to September two thousand one? No, okay, uh,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: this battles what day? December one? December one? Give me
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: what was going on up to December sixty six? Little background?
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: So I love this part of the story as well,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: because there's just this incredible perfect storm of events that
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: come together to create this moment of conflict. And here's
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: here you'll be interested in this if you're really setting
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: the historical stage. You know, what is what's happening in
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: a massive way is the floodgates are kind of opened
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: on American immigration west. And and I love this confluence
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: of events. So eighteen forty six, the US and the
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: United Kingdom enter a treaty that gives Oregon, that settles
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: that Oregon will be part of the United States. So
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: eighteen forty six Oregon becomes legally American. That was that
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: was like the last piece of the puzzle, right, not quite.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: And here's the other the war with Mexico. Not quite.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: So eighteen forty six U S gets Oregon from the UK.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Eighteen forty seven, Brigham young establishes a a settlement in
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Salt Lake City. Eighteen forty eight, the us UH signs
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: the treaty that ends the Mexican American War. So it's
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: forty eight when California becomes American. And two weeks after
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: they signed that treaty with the Mexicans, at Sutter's Mill
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: in California, they discovered gold. And then you have the
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: forty Niners with the gold Rush. So in that three
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: year period you have Oregon, California, and Salt Lake City
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: just sort of saying come west, and people start doing it.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: And then they said he get rich and get rich. Yeah,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: and you know, but what happens for a while basically
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: between uh, you know, the late eighteen forties and eighteen
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: sixty six, the era that that that I'm writing about
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: is most people are going across They're getting across the
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: middle part of the country as quickly as they can.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: They just want to get to California or Oregon or
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: Salt Lake City. They were was at the time in
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: which they would refer to it as the Great American
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: Desert or something exactly. And so the first thing that
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: the government does in eighteen fifty one is they they
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: they sign a treaty with the tribes that creates a
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: travel corridor that's basically the Oregon Trail. And they but
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: the fifty one treaty says to the tribes, you can
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: have everything north of of the Platte River, north of
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: the Oregon Trail. With a treaty like that, Like, what
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: are they specifying the specifying that people can pass through unmolested.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: Are they actually saying like, here's a little buffer we
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: don't want anybody to go into mostly passed through them unmolested.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: They say, here's the road that you can do that,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: you will allow settlers to use. They allowed him to
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: set up forts along the road to defend the trail.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: But they said to the tribes, everything north of the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: north Platte is yours. And they tried to kind of
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: divide it up, meaning like we'll never tell yes, no
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: interest yes. And then what happens is the gold, the
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: plastic gold, the easy gold, runs out in California by
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: the late by the early eighteen fifties, and so all
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: those guys who went out to California to get rich
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: on gold start coming back to the middle of the continent,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: and there's start to be gold strikes in places like
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: uh like Nevada and Colorado, and then in eighteen sixty
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: two in Montana. And what happens when they strike gold
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: in Montana is all these gold miners start peeling off
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: of the Oregon Trail and going north up to Montana
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: to get the Bannock City in Virginia City and the
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: other gold strikes. And when they do that, when those
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: when those miners start peeling off the Oregon Trail, they're
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: violating the treat the eight fifty one treaty, which has
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: given all of that too. The tribes, and so it
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: creates this conflict. And by eighteen sixty six, and this
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: is the this is what sometimes it's called the Bozeman Trail,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: and I think it was more commonly then called the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Montana Road. That the Bozeman Trail goes right through the
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: middle of the Powder River Valley. And what the U. S.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Government does, and this is what the U. S. Government
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: does every single time when there's conflict between a treaty
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: and the desire to go get gold is they try
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: and in their most benign form, they try and renegotiate
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: the treaty with the tribes and say, oh, now we
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: want to go up there signed a new treaty. And
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: so in the summer of eighteen sixty six i e.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Uh six months before the battle that this book is
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: about at Fort Laramie, they bring the tribes together, some
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: tribes together, because this is a bone of contention as
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: to which tribes actually signed the treaty. But in the
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: summer of eighteen sixty six, the US government signs a
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: new treaty that basically says they can travel through the
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Powder River Valley and build three words between Fort Laramie
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: and the gold fields in Montana. What are they given?
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: What do they give us compensation? Uh? For that treaty?
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: I I can't remember if they because what they did
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty one is they said, we'll give you
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: fifty dollars worth of annuities every year and they would
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: come out with wagons full of arrowheads and blankets and
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: metal pots and some kind of like rolling cattle and
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: stuff into there. Right. Yeah, although I don't think the
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: cattle was as common for those annuities. I don't know
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: if if there was an annuity agreement in eighteen sixty
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: six or not. But when they do an annuity like that,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: they would say basically in perpetuity, Yeah, we'll truck out
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: and drop off at some locations goods and the tribes
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: will come in annually and collect their annuities. That was
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: that was meant to be like forever. Uh. But what
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: they do in eighteen sixty six is they they find
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: And this is part of the misconception of the U.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: S Government for a long time, certainly then but even
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: even now in terms of wanting to think of of
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: the tribes as being monolithic entities. They wanted they wanted
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: the Lakota to be France because they were used to
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: having the negotiations between you know, the United States and France,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: and you would get each country's diplomats together and you
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: sign a treaty. And the Lakotah, the tribes, the Lakota
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: representatives that they signed treaties with, and then the other
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: representatives that they signed the treaty with in oftentimes didn't
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: even live in the part of the country that was
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: being given away in the treaty. So those tribes that
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: would sign the treaty, they they didn't Uh, it was
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: not an issue for them to sign a treaty saying
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: you can have the Powder River Valley because that's not
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: where those tribes lived. But if you're a Red Cloud
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: who lives in the Powder River Valley who didn't sign
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: that treaty then, and you can imagine that that didn't
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: go over well. But here's the thing that confused me
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: a little bit though. The Powder River Valley where where
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: the fight takes place. Wasn't that supposedly that wasn't even
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: Lakota ground hadn't then, But hadn't they agreed that that
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: was the crow not It was more ambiguous than that.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: Um and so and and and there certainly was fighting
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: between the among many of the tribes, including between the
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: Lakota and the Crow very famously, but also between the
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: Lakota and the Shoshone, for example, who lived predominantly on
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: the other side of the of the Big Hornament. But
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: history like, yeah, skirmishing whatever that predates that. And and
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: the notion, I mean, the notion that tribes had defined
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: very specifically defined territories is very much and uh something
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: that I think the US government wanted to believe because
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: that made it more convenient to negotiate these treaties. But
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: that's not the way that the tribes thought about it.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: Not to say that they didn't have hunting territories that
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: they would defend, lands that they would defend from other
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: tribes the Lakota versus the Crow, or the Lakota versus
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: the Shoshone. But it was not something that was that
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: was you know, agreed to in the sense that that
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: the U. S Government wanted to think about. And so
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: when they try and when the US government tries to
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: impose this notion of a treaty on the tribes with
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: specifically defined borders, and uh, you know, the notion that
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: one tribe can consign that on behalf of another tribe
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: just didn't it didn't like this creek, that river, or
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: that mountain ridge exactly and so and in fact, uh,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: what happens in the summer of eighteen sixty six is
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: Red Cloud is at Fort Laramie as part of these negotiations.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: And in the middle of those negotiations, Colonel Carrington, who
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I read about in the book, marches into Fort Laramie
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: from Nebraska with three hundred troops, and the Lakota find
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: out that his mission is to go build forts in
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: the Powder River Valley. This is before the treaty has
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: even been signed, even a treaty that they don't like.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: And so Red Cloud says, you know, screw this, I'm
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: out of here. Like I thought we were here to negotiate,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: but you've already decided um. And Red Cloud leaves. And
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: that was because that was an area that he had
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: spent his life in, yes, And so he sees that,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: you know, the game was fixed and it's not a
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: real negotiation, and he leaves. After he leaves, other tribes
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: signed a treaty saying you can go occupy the Powder
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: River Valley tribes that don't live there. And so that's
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: the setup. When you ask what's the set up for
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: for December twenty one six, that's the setup. Is a
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: couple of decades in which the floodgates have just been
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: opened wide in terms of of Eastern Americans going west. Uh,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: a history of treaties that have been established and then violated,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: and a very recent treaty that is agreed to without
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: the participation of the tribes that live in the land
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: that is subject to the treaty. And then this Carrington
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: guy heads north with none other than Jim Bridger, Jim Bridger.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: And I could not believe this when I started doing
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: research on this, because I love Jim Bridger, and you know,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: and he's a nineteen year old naive greenhorn in The Revenant,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: and by the time of this book eighteen sixty six,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: he's a sixty six year old legend of the West,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: and truly a legend of the West. I mean, he's
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: he is in his own day. The soldiers are in
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: awe of him because he's he's famous as a incredible
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: Western scout. And so yeah, the Army hire Jim Bridger
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: to scout for them in the Powder River Valley in
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: this campaign in eighteen sixty six, and not only Jim Bridger,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: but for mountain Men aficionados out there. They also hire
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: James Beckworth, who is a incredibly famous mixed race scout
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: born a slave with a white father and a black
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: slave mother, freed by his white UH father as a boy,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: and both Bridger and Beckworth and go out and are
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: part of the original eight twenty three Rocky Mountain Fur
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: Company expedition that goes out that I read about in
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: the Revenant. And so these two guys, who are both
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: in their sixties at this point, are and legends in
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: their own time, are scouting for the U. S. Army.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: One of the things talk about UH fiction and why
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: I wrote this as a novel. What happens in real
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: life is Colonel Carrington, the commanding officer of the of
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: the this army group, dispatches Bridger and Beckworth to go
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: figure out where the Indians are. And so there's literally
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: a moment that takes place in the fall of eighteen
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: sixty six where Jim freaking Bridger and James freaking Beckworth
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: are riding across the prairie together for for two months
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: UH looking for the tribes and and imagining the conversations
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: that those two guys were having, which I try and
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: do in the book that movie Drug Store Cowboys. We've
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: seen Bob well and and imagine what they've seen. I mean,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: they came. They came West in eighteen twenty three with
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountain Fur Company and are part of literally
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: one of the very first commercial for operations in the
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: eighteen twenties, and they ride through, uh, they ride out
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: the whole fur trade era until the until eighteen forty.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: Bridger then reinvents himself and sets up a fort that
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: ends up being right on on the Mormon Trail to
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: to Salt Lake City and makes a ton of money
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: selling provisions to immigrants on the on the Oregon Trail.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: And then by the eighteen sixties he's scouting for the
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: US or he's making his living as a as a
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: scout for the U. S. Army. But the history that
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: he's seen is phenomenal thinking. And you paint him as
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: being um like, and I buy it. Well, you paint
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: him as as becoming conflicted about the changes in the West. Well,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: I thought about that a lot, and I think we
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: talked about a little bit about this when I was
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: here before. I think for some of those guys like
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: Bridger and Beckworth, they must have been conflicted because their
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: world was changing so much, and the world that drew
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: them to the west, uh, you know, the truly open
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: frontier was changing, and not only was it changing, but
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: they were helping to facilitate that. And I think there
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: must have been a lot of I think they must
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: have questioned themselves about whether that was exactly the world
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: that they wanted the West to be. Did they really
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: want civilization? And if you look at it from a
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: abundance of game, yeah, oh, I mean that they were
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: seeing their witnessing like here there are all these decades
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: they have been living off these like incomprehensible herds of
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: buffalo that's vanishing, like it already along the trail, especially harder, harder,
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: fun decimation of the beaver and then just people man. Yeah,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: And so I think, and I also just think as
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: you get older, you're more reflective about about things generally
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: and and your life and your role. And it's not
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: that I think that Bridger suddenly had a massive conversion
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: and and you know, uh, turned away from his earlier life.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't think that's I don't think that's
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: what happened, But I think there must have been a lot.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: There must have been moments where he he asked himself
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: questions and they and I play with that in the book.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: So what do you think the draw was for Bridger
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: to participate in this, like strictly the money or something else? Um?
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of it was probably making a living.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: And look, he was his living as he was a
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: scout and uh, I think he must have been proud
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: that they would need to rely on him and want
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: to rely on him as as much as they did.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: I I think he might have had some some antipathy
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: towards the Lakota, in part because his tribes that he
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: had married into and spent the most time with, where
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: the whether Shoshonee, who were historical enemies of the of
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: the Lakota and the Cheyenne. So I think who shot
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: him in the back with an arrow? That was a
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: black Feet? Right? That was the Blackfeet, I believe, Yeah,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: back in the twenties. Yeah, Um, And so look, I'm
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: sure it was. I'm sure there were lots of things
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: going on. And I think people sometimes try and oversimplify
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: how people make decisions, and I try not to do
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: that because I think if you think, if we think
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: about our own lives and how we make big decisions,
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: there's usually lots of different things at play, and I
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: don't think there was just one thing that played for
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: for Bridger. So Bridger helps them identify or mare they've
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: already identified a fort site. Yeah, it's not entirely clear
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: how they decide exactly where are going to be, but
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: we'll talk about that spot. Well. One thing I'll say
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: about Bridger and one decision he was involved when is
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: Bridger told the army not to go up to powder
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: Over Valley because he Bridger told them to go up
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: the other side of the Big Horns because that's where
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: the Shoshony were, who were more friendly to the U. S. Government.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: And he said, if you go up to the Shoshony
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: side of the Big Horns, uh, you won't have to fight.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: But it was longer, and there was such it took
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: like Tanner twenty days longer if you went on the
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: eastern side of the Big Horns. And so they were
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: so eager to get to the gold fields that they
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: just wouldn't except a short a longer route wouldn't that
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: be the western side of the Big Horn. I'm sorry
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: that the longer route was the shy were on the
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: western side side, absolutely on the western side of the
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: Big Horns, and it was the Powder River valleys on
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: the on the eastern side of the Big Horns. And
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: Bridget told him go up the western side, whether the
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: Shoshone are, you won't have to fight. And the army said,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: we don't want to take the extra time. And so
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: they've foisted a treaty on tribes and went up the
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: Powder River side and that's what led immediately to the conflict.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: So that was that's the one thing I know about
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: where Bridgers specifically advised them. I don't know about the
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: individual fort sites. Once I got on the on the
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: Powder riverside um and they pick a spot, they pick
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: a spot. Uh. You've guys are probably been in this
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: part of the country. It's it's it's beautiful. These these
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: creeks that run off the Big Horn uh into the
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: Powder River Valley are are just they're timbered and they're green,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: and there's these crystal clear cricks that run off the
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: Big Horn uh and and you can see why they
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: think that this is a good spot and this, this
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: spot where Fort Philcarney is is beautiful, great water grass
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: for their stock, especially because they were driving a herd
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: of a thousand cattle. Uh, they weren't feeding their their
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: horses on on the army didn't feed their horses on
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: on grass, but they needed grass for for their cattle.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: There's timber to build a fort with. It's a great
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: fort site. The only problem is it's dead center in
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: the middle of Lakota. Uh, home planned and and hunting territory.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: When you you mentioned that they're packing with, you gotta
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: kind of get a picture of what this most look
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: like coming across the landscape. Yeah, driving a thousand cattle.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: They have sawmills, I mean they have. They are coming
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: to stay there, like everything you need to establish a city. Yes,
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: So this is not like a fifties movie where there's
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: a hundred cavalrymen out on a on a patrol. This
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: is Uh. This is a massive caravan, a mass of
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: wagon train that includes hundreds of soldiers, both cavalry and infantry.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: It includes hundreds of Condostoga wagons bringing supplies including as
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: you point out, a sawmill that they construct on the
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: site in order to to mill the logs to to
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: build the buildings that they're putting up. It includes a
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: herd of a thousand cattle which they intend and this
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: doesn't work work out very well for them. They're they're
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: intending to use as their winner food supply and and
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: this is one of the things that must have been
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: most striking to the to the Lakota is they see
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: that there are women and children as part of this
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: as part of this group, which meant that they weren't
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: on a patrol. It meant that they were coming to
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: establish a town or a city, and that's exactly what
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: they did. They built this massive fort and Fort phil
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: Kearney is huge. You can visit the site today. There's
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: not the it was burned by the by the tribes
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: after the after the end of this war, but the
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: the area that they enclosed in the stockade enclosed thirteen acres,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: so it's huge. And then inside of this walled area
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: there they built buildings. But it it didn't look like
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: the the kind of small trading post fort and we
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: kind of sometimes have in our mind's eye. This is
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: a massive fortification. Can you explain what the army would
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: trade is that plays a role in this sure so. Uh.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: The daily life at Fort phil Karney in this era
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: basically involved the mission of the fort of these of
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: this army and in the early days, is to build
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: the fort. They're not even supposed to really be out
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: looking to to fight the tribes. They're supposed to be
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: building the fort and establishing a base and then they're
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: presumably going to go out in the spring and fight.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: And so every day what they do is they send
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: out what they called the wood train, which was a
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: caravan of of wagons, and they would they were about
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: three miles away from the good timber, and they wanted
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: the fort not to be right up against the timber,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: because they wanted it to be more open for defensive purposes. Cannons,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: they got cannons, and they want to be able to
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: use use the cannons, which they did. So every day
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: a wood train that was manned by soldiers would would
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: go out three miles to where the timber was and
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: they would cut trees down and then they would hold
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: those trees back to the fort and they would mill
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: those into either the logs they used to actually uh,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: they would stand them up straight side by side to
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: build the perimeter of the fort, but then they had
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: the sawmill that they could mill boards with to build
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: all the buildings. So basically what they're doing all to
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: the fall is they're sending out wood cruise and a
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: wood train to cut wood. And what the what the
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: Lakota do is they are constantly harassing these wood trains,
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: and so they're over the course of the fall, there's
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: this kind of crescendo of violence as they as the
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: Lakota and the Cheyenne, increasingly attack the wood trains uh
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: in ever more uh kind of sophisticated types of attacks,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: and all of that then leads up to this big
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: battle at the end, which is uh fundamentally different from
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: anything that the army had had ever seen before, which
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: is one of the reasons why I think it was
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: so effective. Explain the kind of raids that were taught
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: about when to say, like attack in the wood train.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: So of what a typical wood crew would be maybe
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: uh twenty soldiers to cut wood and twenty soldiers whose
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: job was to stand guard because they every time they
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: went out virtually there was an attack or certainly the
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: threat of attack. So what an attack would be over
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: the course of the fall, were these very small war
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: parties of you know, ten twelve warriors that would go
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: out and do these guerilla style running attacks against the
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: wood cruise. And a lot of soldiers died over the
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: course of the fall. I mean dozens, they did. They
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, but none of the of those
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: skirmishes were big. You know, one or two or five
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: soldiers would die. It was not a big battle. It
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: was it was viewed as more of a by the
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: by the army, as more of a of a harassment.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: They weren't in the mindset that the that the tribes
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: would come together and attack them in a in a
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: big way. And frankly, not only were they not in
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: that mindset, but they disregarded in ways that that proved
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: quite foolish the ability of the of the tribes to
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: kind of come together and have a kind of massive
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: strategy or big trap that would challenge them if they had,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: if they went out and force. In your book, you
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: get into this um it's like a little side story
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: or inter story of some sort. I can't find the
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: right word for it. With the cattlemen that show up,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: is that was is that a thing to happen? It happened,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: and this was complete catnip for me because of what
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: you of what you said, Larry McMurtry. So my favorite,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: uh novel of all time is is Lonesome by by
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: Larry McMurtry, which people have probably read and people they know,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: is about the first ever cattle drive from Texas to Montana.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: And I'm doing the research for can We Hold Their
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: just explains from yeah, um, now like in modern times,
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: you can bring a cow like a cargo from birth
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: to sale quicker than it used to like even today,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: if you go down to Argentina wherever, like you know,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: they don't grain cattle down there. Um, they don't hit
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: slaughter weight for a couple of years. It's a longer thing.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: You could and these cattle. When you hear about these
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: cattle drives, you could get a bunch of calves right
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: or even start with pregnant cows. What you're doing is
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: you're going up to the north where there is grass.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: You're you're taking them up like you're taking a single
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: generation up to get fattened for free on free grass,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: and then bring him somewhere to sell them. So it's
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: not like it's not you're bringing them up there to
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: leave them there you're talking about the Montana driver. You know,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: people would do it's like cattle drives going up a
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: lot of times to be like you're just they're they're
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: just feeding them, you know, it's like it's not you
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: sold them to some guy up there. Well this uh
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: So the guy that we're talking about here in truth
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: is a guy named Nelson Store. And when I was
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: doing the research for the about the you know, this
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: Powder River War in eighteen sixty six, not only does
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: Jim Bridger show up there and James Beckworth in the
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: middle of this and as a writer, I'm like, yeah,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: but also in the middle of this war that's going on,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: this Texas cattle herd and it's Texas longhorns that they're
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: driving literally uh with twenty uh cowboys driving it shows
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: up at Fort phil Karney in the fall of eighteen
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: sixty six, in the middle of this war, and the
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: guy that is leading them is a guy named Nelson
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: Story who had been a gold miner in Bannock, Montana
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: and made like a pretty decent chunk. He makes like
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: thirty dollars. Oh yeah, I forgot about this details and
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: so he but he doesn't like mining and he sees
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: that what the miners don't have is food, and so
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: what he figures figures out is he's going to take
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: his thirty dollars from panning golden bannock and he dropped.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: He rides his horse to Texas and he gathers up
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: a herd of cattle and hires twenty cowboys and they
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: literally drive this cattle herd from Texas to Virginia City, Montana,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: successfully with the goal of establishing do not what I
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: was saying, And I mean he he sells half of them,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: but he keeps. He establishes the first cattle ranch in
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: Paradise Valley and may have named it um. And so
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: he establishes a cattle ranch in Paradise Valley, uh near
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: what's now Livingston, and becomes the first Montana millionaire selling
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: cattle to gold miners. And half the ship in Bowsman
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: is named after him. Exactly. Yeah, he's buried here. Yeah yeah, so,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, my kid when I had to escort
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: his field his field trip, one day, we went to
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: look at we went to see where they last guy
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: they hung down at the courthouse, and then he went
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: over to see at the gallows, which is still there.
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: And then went over to see, uh stories Tombstone. So
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: this the story of story for me was too enticing
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: not to incorporate into the book because it's just it is.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: And Larry mcmintry has said that he based in part
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: the story of Lonesome Dove on his research on Nelson's story.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the book that, um, these guys show up
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: and they're better armed, the soldiers much better armed. The
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: army was incredibly stupid about the weapons that they gave
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: their soldiers for a long time, and in eighteen sixty six,
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: these poor bastards who get sent out to fight on
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: the western frontier are carrying civil war uh springfield muzzle
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: loading obviously single shot rifles. And that's at a time
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: when there were really great repeating rifles that were available
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: and the civilians were smart enough to have them. So
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: for example, uh, you know, there's two civilians that right
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: out on the day of the battle with with with
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: Carrington is man, they're both armed with Henry repeating rifles
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: which held sixteen bullets like a two like a lever
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: action lever action repeating rifle, highly accurate sixteen rounds. They
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: joke at the time, was you load on Sunday and
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: shoot all week. Um, they have at that those guys
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: had been laying waste with those things. Man, they didn't
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: want the details of that battle, Like the way it
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: was laid out, you can imagine just being able to shoot,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: and they were, and they were good with them, and
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: they were Civil War veterans, so they were you know
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: they were and and yeah, if if the army had
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: had those it would have been a different outcome. Who
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: go back to story one quick step? Um, how did
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: he like? I know he did, but how did he
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: think that he would live? Well, it's crazy and uh uh.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: He does arm his twenty guys with repeating rifles and
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: so they're well armed. But when you think about they
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: just running a rolling gun battle through the valley, not
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: a roll rolling battle, but they did. They did fight
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: several battles with the tribes on the way up. I mean,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: these guys were we're flat out badass and the fact
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: that they thought that they could do it is unbelievable.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: And they but they succeed, and our night's sleep well
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: and they they did have their cattle runoff at one point,
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: they lost like half their heard and they go out
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: with a party and they recapture, they fight the tribe
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: that took him, and they recapture the battle and heard
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: the the strays back into the herd and keep going.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's an amazing story. The story story is
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: an amazing story. So what's different on December when the
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: wood train sets out? So what is different is uh
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: the what I think is really happening is the Lakota
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: and Crazy Horse and the Red Cloud and their Cheyenne
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: and Arapaho allies have just spent the fall learning about
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: their enemy and taking into consideration everything that they learn.
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: The U. S. Army has been doing exactly the opposite.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: They've they first of all, underestimate their enemy in terms
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: of that enemy's ability to uh conduct a massive operation.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: I think there's a good amount of prejudice that goes
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: into that in terms of how they thought that the
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: tribes are even capable of fighting. Um, they they're very
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: focused just on building the fort and not thinking about
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: about fighting. And what Red Cloud does is he he
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: does something that is unprecedented for that time, and it
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: totally takes the army by surprise. The first thing he
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: does is he creates this coalition of tribes and the
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: tribes had not typically fought together in this way before,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: but Red Cloud does this great diplomacy with the Cheyenne,
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: with the Arapaho. There's evidence that he even tried to
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: reach out to the Crow to be part of that coalition,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 1: which shows you how much he was recalculating the position
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: of the of the tribes on the on the plains
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: at that time. The Crow didn't want to be a
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: part of it, but he may have. I've actually reached
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: out to them. So he creates this massive coalition. He
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: also decides that they're going to do something that is
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: legions beyond anything they've ever done before. The biggest war
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: party that they had ever put together over the course
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: of the fall is probably one or two hundred warriors.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: And the war party that he brings together and and usually,
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: as we talked about before, it was a dozen kind
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: of guerilla style hits. What he does on December twenty
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: one six is he pulls together two thousand warriors, this
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: coalition of Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and he finds this valley
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: three miles away from the fort where if they can
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: get the army there, they won't have any of the
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: advantage that they have at the fort, either the fortification
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: or the cannons or anything else. And he places like
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: a level of secrecy, in complete secrecy because nobody they
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: and they can't see this. You can't if once you
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: go over a lodge trail ridge, which is the ridgeline
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: in the book, you can't see on the other side.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: You can't see from the from the fort the other side.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: And then the trick, and this is a huge trick,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: is somehow they've got to get the army to come
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: out of the fort in numbers and get them to
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: go three miles over the ridgeline into the trap so
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: that it can be sprung. And that's the job of
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: crazy horse. Crazy horse job. I want to put it
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: in Another challenge you spent and maybe you're good to
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: you spend a lot of time talking about it, is
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: how far they lured these people in with no one
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: noticing that there's two thousand people hiding under clumps of
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: stage and not just people horses like the subterfuge. Yes,
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: I mean it's and when you walk the people with
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: horses with horses, and and when you walk the battlefield.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: And we talked about this when I was here before
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: to the notion that you know, people always talk about
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: featureless planes and that's the stupidest description ever, because planes
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: are anything but featureless. There there's all sorts of coolies
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: and draws and creek beds and you name it. And
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: when you walk this battlefield, there's all of that, but
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: there's but it's still pretty open. And it's pretty open,
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: certainly if you're trying to hide two thousand warriors and
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: their horses. And so to me, that's one of the biggest,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: uh mysteries of the battle and one of the most
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: amazing things that they did is they they hid themselves
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: and their horses such that all of these uh, these
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: cavalrymen and infantrymen get up on this ridge line and
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: look down and don't see anything and write it and
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: maybe want to It makes me want to go back
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: there just to look like, I don't understand how does
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: that like? I want to go look to get a
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: better grip on how you could hide that many people.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: I've I've I've walked it a lot of it, and uh,
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: and you can you can imagine it, but you also
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: see the skill that it took just to keep the
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: horses quiet and to and to hold their positions, they
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: had to wait because they were they're basically on if
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: it's a if it's a if you think of it
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: of the battlefield as a as a clock, they're basically
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: and and if you imagine that the army riding in
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: at twelve o'clock, they basically have uh warriors deployed between
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: ten o'clock and two o'clock all around the clock. And
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: so between the army has to ride in between ten
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: o'clock and two o'clock and get to the center of
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: the clock and then they close it up. But they
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: have to suck them into the center of that of
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: that clock to do it, and and to do and
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: that's a that's that's not two yards, that's like a mile,
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: and so it's a it's a massive battlefield. And so
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: but that's what they successfully do is they suck them
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: into the center of that of that clock and then
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: they quickly close up between ten o'clock and two o'clock
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: and then it's a masker Is it undis because your
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: book gets into it. Is it undisputed that they were
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: for they were forbidden to the like, sure, go chase them,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: don't go over the ridge. So I think it's pretty
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: close to undisputed. And I say that with a little
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: bit of hesitation because Colonel Carrington, who is in the
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: fort during the battle, and he's the he's the head cheese,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: he's the guy who sends these guys out, but he
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: doesn't he doesn't go fight, and therefore he doesn't go die. Ah.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: He after this, after this massacre happens, it's hugely politically
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: controversial in the US because it's the worst to that time,
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: as I said, the worst defeat in U S military
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: history until Custer. And so there's a huge like investigation
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: of what happened, and Carrington basically spends the rest of
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: his career defending himself that it wasn't his fault. And
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: there does seem to be pretty good evidence that he
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: gave the very explicit order don't go over Lodge Trail Ridge,
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: and if they hadn't gone over Lodge Trail Ridge, they
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have died because the traps on the other side
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: of Lodge Trail Ridge. Um. But uh, But I do
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: say it with a little bit of hesitation because he
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: he does a lot of other things that I think
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: very deliberately distort the record, including blaming Fetterman overwhelmingly as
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: the villain of the of the battle. I think some
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: of the scholarship that has been done more recently rightly
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: puts the blame on another one of the officers, a
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: guy named Grummand who is much more the villain in
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: in my book, you pay him, you pay him out
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: of a whole I think he wasn't a whole. Um
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: And there's uh and there's good evidence of that. Um.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: And let me compare those two guys in terms of
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: the historical evidence. By the way, so Fetterman and they're
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: both Civil War veterans, and by all accounts, all of
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: the officers, with the exception of Carrington, who was a
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: logistics guy in the in the war, all of the
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: other officers at the fort were had a lot of
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: combat experience in the Civil War and were decorated. But
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: Fetterman had a reputation for not only bravery, but also
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: for being kind of a company man and following orders.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: Ah ah, the the the reputation of Grummond. By contrast,
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: he was court martialed during the Civil War for for
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: beating one of his noncommissioned officers. He was court martialed
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: for shooting an unarmed civilian, and he was court martialed
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: for disobeying orders and charging head when he wasn't supposed to.
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: So when you weigh there, when you weigh their records,
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: and you think who is more likely to have been
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: the one who disobeyed orders and went over the ridgeline?
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: To me, it comes down on Grumman. And in the aftermath,
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: Carrington's wife sort of like, how are we going to
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: the aftermath? Well, I'm not, but I'm saying Carrington's wife
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: sort of like goes on to her blaming Vetterman. Right,
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: how does that influence things? Well, a lot because and
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: uh and it's crazy because uh uh, just it's a
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: little bit incestuous here because at the time that the
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: book Taste takes place, both Carrington and Grumman's wives are
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: part of the fort. And in fact, I write a
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: lot about Francis Gruman because I think she's a very
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: fascinating character. But you're right, Carrington's wife, his first wife,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: Margaret Carrington, joins him in making this defense of her husband,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: and she writes an autobiography in which she basically says
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: she gives Rington's version of the battle, including don't go
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: over Lodge trail Ridge, and she blames Fetterman like Carrington.
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: But uh but uh, Carrington's first wife, Margaret dies and
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: and he ends up marrying Grumman's wife and then he's
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: been died in the fight and uh. And Grumman's wife
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: then writes her own autobiography, and she also repeats, in
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: some cases almost word for word, uh, the the account
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: of the battle that her husband propagated, that he was
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: not at fault, so he put two people up to it.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: He put two wives up to it. Yeah, to do
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: his dirty work. The ten warriors that sort of acted
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: as the decoys you have, like to Chyenne, to rappero
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: Um two from. Is there any significance to that there was?
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: And I think we don't know exactly who the who
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: the decoys were. There's I think there's pretty good evidence
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: and crazy Horse is one of them. But they My
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: understanding is that the tribes picked honorary decoys that were
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: representative of of their of their people, and so I
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: think it's it's probably pretty accurate that there was the
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: type of mixture that I that I described there, and
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: that comes a lot from a lot of the oral
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: accounts of the battle from from different uh from different tribes, when, um,
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: what's the the you know, for a long time people
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: called the Fetterman Massacre also the Fetterman Fight, but it
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: had the battle of hand? Was that? Was that a
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: sue name? That was what the Lakota call it because
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: they had someone had a problem that there is someone
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: said like if you want to catch a bunch of
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: them a half man. So there is a there's a
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: transgender Lakota and we don't know his name in in
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: my book I give I give the name Moon for
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: this person. But when I when I first read about this,
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: I wondered about it. But there is an account of
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: this from George Bird Grinnell, who's a guy that I
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: wrote a book about who was a conservationist and also
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: in a Native American ethnologist. And in nineteen fifteen he
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Fighting Cheyenne, and as part
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: of his research in nineteen fifteen, he interviews a Cheyenne
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: warrior named white Elk who had been at the at
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: the Fetterman Fight, who fought at the Fetterman Fight and
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: walks the battlefield with him, and this Cheyenne warrior, white
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: Elk tells the story of a of a transgender Lakota.
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: Their their word for it was winked, a transgender Dakota,
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: and the and the the winkday were revered in Lakota culture,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: which I think is very interesting as having the wisdom
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: of both men and women. They were revered in the tribe,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: and they were they were often turned to or advice,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: whether it was in family matters or in in battle.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: And so this account that I use as the basis
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: for what I write about in the novel is from
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: this nineteen fifteen account that George Bird Grennell wrote down
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: from the story here he heard from a Cheyenne wear
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: a white elk, which I think is pretty good, pretty
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: good evidence. Um, and it was it wasn't quite a
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: hunter hole was the numbers? Well, to go to your question.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: So the prophecy what happens is Red Cloud and the
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: other leaders kind of go to the battlefield the day
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: before to survey it and decide where they're gonna they're
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: gonna hide everybody, And in deciding whether or not to
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: use that site as the battlefield, they call upon this
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: this wink to a profit to to tell him what's
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: going to happen, and he prophesieses that uh, he rides.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: The prophet rides all over the battlefield and comes back
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: three separate times. And on his third time coming back,
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: he is acting out that his arms are full and
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: that his hands are full, and he tells red Cloud
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: in the other chiefs that he has a hundred in
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: his hands, a hundred dead soldiers in his hands, and
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: that's his prophecy for what will happen if they have
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: the battle at this place. And so that's the moment
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: when Red Cloud decides that this is the place and
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: time and place. And so the Dakoda referred to the
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: battle as the battle of the hundred in the hands.
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: Not quite a hundred die, but eighty one die, which
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: is I don't know what the probably we keep track
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: on prophecies, but that was not too far off. Once
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: they spring the trap, so that the ten dco we
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: kind of state was he's ten decoys, rile up skirmish
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: with somehow infuriate um and get these soldiers to just
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: be like, now our chance, We're finally gonna get these suckers. Ye,
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: they ride into the center of the clock. Once they
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: spring the trap, how long does it take them to
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: kill them? All thirty minutes, and there are unbelievable Yeah,
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: and there are unbelievable accounts of thirty minutes thirty minutes,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: And so what starts happening back at the fort um
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: and there's a good there's good you know, written history
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: of this is all of a sudden they start hearing gunshots, um,
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: and then they start hearing a shipload of gun shots,
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: and then they stop hearing any gunshots, and and and
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: they they know something. And they can't see any of
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: this because they've gone over the ridgeline and they send
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: out what's supposed to be a relief force so that
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: it gets their way too late, and they actually the
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: relief force once they get up on the ridge line
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: and look down there, they can see what's going on.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: The relief force is smart enough not to write down there.
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: But but thirty minutes is about the amount of time
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: that the battle takes. And what's the amount of friendly
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: fire from both sides that's sort of happening quite a bit,
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: uh including well, I don't I don't know as much
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: on the on the on the U. S. Army side
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: how much friendly fire was because they probably were firing
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: more outward. But there was a lot of friendly fire
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: between the tribes because they're they're in a circle and
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: they're firing towards the center. But there is is quite
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: a bit of of anecdotal evidence about about Native American
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: warriors being killed by arrows because there were so many arrows,
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: and of course it's it's chaotic in the center, must
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: be a buzz with arrows. I mean, you see these
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: movies now where they show these waves of arrows, you know,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: flying in and it that's it must have been unbelievable.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: Um you have it that there's some suicide among the soldiers.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: That is one of the controversies about the battle. And
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: I talk at the end about the fact that we
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: don't I don't know that that happened. I think it's
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: quite plausible that when it got down to the end,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a famous trope in Western
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: stories of of you know, save the last bullet for yourself,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: and I think it it must have at the end
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: to those guys, that handful of guys who were left
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: surrounded on all sides, been obvious that they weren't going
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: to make it. And I think a few of them
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: probably did make this You're not going to become a
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: prisoner a war. You're not going to be a pow. Um.
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: They were watching their uh, their fellow soldiers. You know
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: the way these guys die. If they don't get shot
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: with an arrows, they get hacked to death. Um, you're
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: getting bludgeoned and you're getting killed with with with war
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: clubs and and hatchets. And so it's not at all
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: implausible to me that that some of them at the
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: end chose to to commit suicide instead. And two of
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: those well that the suicide speculation sort of exists around
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: our Fetterman in Brown, right, that's right. And Uh, there
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: there is contrary evidence which all which I also talked
• 1:48:12
  Speaker 1: about at the end of the book. Uh, there is
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: a a there's a there's a La Coda warrior who
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: claims to have killed Fetterman in a in a within
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: an account that is quite plausible, I think. Um. And
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: there's also some evidence from the post surgeon that Fetterman
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: did not have wounds consistent with suicide. That piece I
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: find a little bit less plausible because it's not like
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: this was Quincy Jones. Uh, you know, autopsy on these soldiers.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: For one thing, this the post surgeon was not a
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: forensic surgeon. He was a post surgeon, and he had
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: eighty bodies brought in and and all the bodies were
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: were mutilated to with the exception of of of one soldier.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: So I don't find it particularly plausible that the post
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: surgeon was able to tell how somebody died. I think
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: there is a credible uh potential that that that fetterman
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: was actually killed by by one of the Lakota Wears,
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: as opposed to committing suicide soldiers dead how many warriors
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: different accounts, Probably uh, somewhere around thirty I think is
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: a is a pretty good guess. Maybe maybe more than that,
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: but I mean there. And you talked Stephen about the
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: two civilians who had the Henry rifles. Most of the
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: evidence of of of Native deaths were in a semi
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: circle around the stones the rocks that these two civilians
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 1: sheltered behind in the early part of the battle where
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 1: they tried to hold out for a while with those
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: Henry rifles. Some real hard ass too, and they were
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: they were they were civil war veterans. They had good
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: weapons and they knew how to use them. And there's
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of evidence that they killed quite a few
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: at that part of the battle and the rest of
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: the battle, I don't think that they were nearly as
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: many uh of the Native Americans killed because they you know,
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: they're just they The army just wasn't organized in any
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: way to to mount an effective defense at that point.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: It was all running, you know, these guys with single shots,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: like they'd shoot a shot and then people would just
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: swarm them and by hand drag them down off their
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: horse and caught them up. Well, I mean, I've fired
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: these muzzleloading guds before, as I'm I know you guys have,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: and it's not an easy, fast thing to load a muzzleloader,
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: even if you're good at it, And to to do
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: that with hundreds of warriors running towards you and arrows
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: flying around and people dying all around you, and especially
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: when they they weren't in any kind of an organized
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: line or position. I just don't think those guys fired
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: their guns very many times. I think they probably got
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: a shot or two off and then and then their
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: gun was a was a club. This is an ignorant question,
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: but like in the aftermath this, what happens to the
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 1: guns that the soldiers had did the warriors swooping and
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: clean some of that stuff up. They did. They gathered
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: all those weapons up, and you know, and that was
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: as you would imagine they would, they would gather everything
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: of use off the battlefield before they before they left.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: There's a saucy detail from the Little Big Horn battle
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: where the seventh Cavalry was carrying a gun that had
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: a newer gun. They had a distinct sound that set
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: it apart, you know, you know, you tell it like
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: different kind of like bigger guns, smaller guns, right, um.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: And the people that weren't caught up in that battle,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: but were we're surrounded on another ridgeline the next day,
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: realized that they were being shot at with their gun,
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: with the gun that they recognized as their own. And
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: that was the early clue of what might have happened,
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: what might have where well, talking about the guns that
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: they had and and ten years, it's interesting because in
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty six, in this battle, most of a lot
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: of the of the Native American warriors did not have rifles,
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: or the rifles they had were single shots, and they
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: preferred to use their their bows and arrows because they
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: could fire so much more rapidly. By eighteen seventy six.
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: Ten years later, Battle of a Little Big Horn, A
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: lot of the of the Native American warriors had Henry
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: repeating rifles gunfight, but the U. S. Army still gave
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: their their their Their soldiers at that point had mostly
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 1: eighteen seventy three Springfield either rifles or car beans, which
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: were those stupid trap door single shot They fired a
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: metal cartridge, but they they were single shots and had
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: to be loaded, you know, one shot at a time
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: through a trap door in the in the breach. And
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: they were by all accounts, not great guns. And the
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: army just had a doctrinary belief in that era that
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: if you gave a soldier the ability to fire rapidly,
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: that they would waste their shots. And so this instead
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: of giving him Henry rifles, they gave him eventually guns
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: that fired a metal cartridge, but still single shots. I
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: can't remember what museum I was at, but it had
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: some firearms. I can't remember what tribe it had them,
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: but um there were demonstrations of their gunsmithing where they'd
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: get these and then keeping them going. It stocks put
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: back together with barrels like barrels, fashioned stocks with raw
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: hide wrappings and filed pieces. You'd get these things, maybe
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: even got it broken. Yeah, And in finding a way
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: to just to keep him well, you think about I
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: I portray Jim Bridger. Uh. There. There's a great thing
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: on Instagram yesterday from the Montana State Historical Society which
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: has Jim Bridgers hacking at the Montana State Historical Society
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: in in Helena, and I one of my goals in
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: life is to go there and and have somebody let
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: me hold that, because I just think that would be
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: a really cool thing to hold Jim Bridgers hocking. But
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: he apparently still had a hocking in this era, and
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: I have a fictionalized scene between him and Beckworth where
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: Beckworth is making fun of him for still using an
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 1: old hawk and rifle. And part of his defense in
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: the book I have is is that he's used to
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: it and he knows how to fix it. He knows
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 1: how it works. And I would imagine that for somebody
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: like that, and old timer in particular, that having a
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: gun that you knew every bit of it and that
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: you knew that if it broke down, you had some
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: chance to being able to fix it, even on the
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: frontier as opposed to the complexity of a repeating rifle system.
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: For an old timer might be like, I don't I
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: don't want to deal with that. I've like, I've told
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: the story thousand times. But I was with an Amerindian
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: group in South America and they had sixteen They had
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: a sixteen gage shotgun, a break open sixteen gage shotgun,
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: and they only had twelve gage shells. So they wouldn't
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: get ready to go hunt at night. They would take
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: that twelve gage shell, cut it open, take a leaf,
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: and pour the shot into a leaf, make their own,
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: get the wad out, pour the powder into a leaf,
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: knocked the primers with the same The primers are compatible.
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: Knocked the primer out, put the primer into the sixteen gauge,
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: pour the powder in uli. Yeah. Usually this little they'd
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: make this little leaf thing to act as a wadding,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: put the shot in, melt a candle, steal the holding
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: off of candle. Acts. They do two or three of
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: those and head off into the Jungeral gosh, that's unbelievable.
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: It's like good ingenuity, right, that's very good ingenuity. Speaking
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: of ingenuity, one of the things that is fascinating to
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: me is the cannon technology of that era. And we
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: were talking before about how wars are a great booster
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: of of innovation, especially on weaponry. And one of the
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: things I learned about working at Fort Landarmy National Historic
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: Site as a teenagers, as I said, we fired these
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: mountain howitz or twice a day, and I was amazed
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: to learn at the sophistication of cannon technology in that day.
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: And I had always thought of a cannon is shooting
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: out a solid either a solid cannon ball, you know,
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: to knock down walls, or they would they would use
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: grape shot, which is basically like turning a shotgun into
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: a cannon, into a big, giant shotgun. But one of
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: the the weapons are one of the options they had
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: with cannons even in that era is something called spherical
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: case shot, and that was a it looked like a
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: cannon ball, but it was hollow on the inside and
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: the inside was filled with smaller cannonballs and gunpowder, and
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: there was a fuse that was on the top of
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 1: the cannon ball that could be cut to blow up
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: at different ranges, and when the cannon would go off,
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: the flame from the ignition with light that fuse in
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: the front the cannon ball, and then it as the
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: cannonball flew down range, the fuse would burn in and
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: at the appointed range you know a thousand yards for example,
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 1: blow up and and all of those cannonballs, the musket
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: balls inside of the cannonball would then disperse on the battlefield.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was a that's an incredibly sophisticated weapon. Uh.
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of mathematics that go behind that.
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: And and in fact, in that era, oftentimes the smartest
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: guys at West Point were made artillery. And because the
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: high technology the day was artillery and mathematics, and so
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: if you were smart and could do math, you were
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: an artilleryman. And then and in the days leading up
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: to this fight, they had the tribes kind of had
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: learned a scout and deal with those guys trying to
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: touch those cannonballs off over their heads all the time. Yeah,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: because I think it was surprising obviously to the to
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 1: the tribes that there was the ability to set these
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: charges off with that kind of precision, you know, a
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: thousand yards away from the walls of the fort. It's
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why there are a very few
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: battles in history where Native American tribes attack a fort,
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: and that's the classic kind of John Wayne uh you
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: know movie, But that didn't happen very often because the
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 1: tribes were smart enough to know that the fort was
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: the place where all the advantages were with the army,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: whether it was hiding behind walls and shooting out word
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 1: with long range rifles or or cannon. And what they
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: were smart enough to know is they needed to draw
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: the army out onto their terrain. And that's of course
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: exactly what they do in in this story. And a
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: follow up attack on the fort never happens, like after
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: we have these eighty one dead soldiers thirty dead warriors
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: that they don't then go and try to take over
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: the fort. They didn't because I think they still for
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: one thing, I think they felt like they had fulfilled
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: the prophecy that they were seeking to fulfill, but also
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: because I think they still respected even with the force
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: that they had gathered, the strength of the of the
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: cannon at the fort and the soldiers that remained there.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: But they do end up winning that war. Yeah, Like yeah,
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: we keep comparing a little big Horm. A little Big
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: Horm was like a very pirate victory, very they even
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 1: in winningly knew they had lost. They dispersed and went
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: into hiding. When this like for a while, so kind
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: of one, including getting a new treaty, uh where the U. S.
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 1: Army agrees. And this is the only time I ever
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: know of this happening, And it didn't last very long,
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: but it happened lasted for a while because of the
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: Fetterman fight. And it's interesting actually, because the politics of
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: the United States in eighteen seventy six are very different
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: from the politics of the United States in eighteen sixty six.
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty six, after the Fetterman Fight, keep in mind,
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: it's only a year after the basically a year after
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 1: the end of the Civil War, and the politics of
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: the of the US at that point are like, we
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: don't want to go fight a war out on the frontier.
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: And so this Fetterman battle happens, and Red Cloud, I
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: think rightly predicts that if he can inflict a massive defeat,
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: that maybe he can scare scare the Whites off for
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: a while. And that's exactly they signed a new treaty.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: They abandoned the Montana Road, they abandoned the three forts.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: The tribes come in and burn those three forts, including
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: Fort Fetterman, to the ground, and really for a period
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: of years at least relative to what's going to happen later,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: the tribes win back the Powder River Valley and other places,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: including including the Black Hills. In eighteen seventy six, the
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: politics of the country have changed. And or if they
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: had the foresight to be like, yeah, we want it,
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: but it's not gonna last, I think they must have
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: been worried. Um, but I don't know. It's a really
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: interesting question. But by eighteen seventy six, when the Little
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: Big Horn defeat happens, and this I love this fact
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: of history. The news of a little Big Horn, A
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: little big Horn is June eighteen seventy six. The news
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: of the Little Big Horn reaches Washington, d c. On
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: July four, eighteen seventy six, the exact one years centennial
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: of the country, and it is a turd in the
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: punch bowl of that celebration. And the reaction to the
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: country at that point is we're not going to let
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: this stand. And at from that point on it's total
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: war against the tribes, and in in a year and
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: a half, the war against the Northern Plains Indians is
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 1: over and Crazy Horse has been forced to uh surrender
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: on a reservation. Sitting Bowl has fled into Canada. Eighteen
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: seventy seven is the year of the They're defeated. It's over,
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: and so once the US really turned its full military
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: force on the war, it was pretty inevitable. I came
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: across something really interesting in the research for this. There's
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: I read that the total population of all the Plains
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: tribes in the eighteen sixties was probably about seventy six thousand.
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: Of the Lakota of the they were probably about sixteen thousand,
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: of which there were about four thousand Lakota fighting men.
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: So think about that. The US at that time had
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: thirty one million people. During the Civil War, the US
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 1: had there was a standing army of two point one
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: million people on the on the north and one million
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: people in the South. So when you think about those numbers,
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: once the US kind of decided we're not gonna let
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: the stand anymore, it wasn't going to and that's exactly
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: what happens after eighteen seventy six. The fot like, following
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: the days of the battle, they have to be on
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: the edge, right because they don't they don't evacuate immediately.
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: They're not gone the next day. It's there's an amazing
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: story that I don't talk about in the book, but
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: we talked about all the time at Fort Laramie UH
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: after the after the battle, they are afraid that they're
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: going to be attacked, and of course they've just lost,
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: you know, half their fighting force, and so there they
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: maybe Red Cloud could have overtaken that for it if
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: you've been willing to kind of, you know, do a
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: World War One style fight against UH an entrenched position.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but they're worried about that, and so
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: Colonel Arrington sends a rider out from Fort phil Karney
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: to Fort Laramie. It's in the middle of a blizzard.
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: And this guy over his name is Portuguese Phillips. That's
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: Phil's great grandfather. His name is Portuguese Phillips. And he
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: rides through a blizzard. I can't remember the exact number
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: of miles, but it's hundreds of miles in a blizzard.
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: It takes him like forty eight hours and he literally
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: arrives at Fort Laramie on in the middle of a
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: Christmas Eve party. So I guess it took him that
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: long between the twenty one and three days. His horse
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: dies in front of the unmarried officers quarters building where
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: they're having a Christmas party, and he staggers into this
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: Christmas party with the news of the of the Fetterman,
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: of the Fetterman fight, and then Fort Laramie sends out
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: troops to to to reinforce the fort. Horse dies front.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: Horse dies in front, easier to dismount. The poor horse
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: dies in front. The name of the building is his
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: old Bedlam. It's a fort at it's a it's a
• 2:05:13
  Speaker 1: building at Fort Laramie that was the enlisted or the
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: unmarried Officers corp Portuguese Phillips want to end up having
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: to him, I don't know, but there's a monument to
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: him at Fort Laramie for making that ride. And the
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 1: fort meanwhile is prepped for like a worst case scenario,
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: and they have explosives rigged up and breaking emergency thing.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 1: So Carrington is so worried about them being overrun that
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: he uh he comes up with a plan and the
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: they stored the powder. The armory at the in the
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: middle of Fort Fille was in the middle of Fort
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: Field Carney and like a dugout kind of building where
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 1: they stored all the powder, and the plan was that
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: if the walls were breached, all of the women and
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: children would go into the go down where the gunpowder
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 1: was and they would set the powder off and blow
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: it up so that they would not suffer the the
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: death that they would otherwise suffer if the if the
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: fort were overrun. But they were so worried about that today.
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: Actually that was they had a plan for that tough
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 1: use the light man used to light. That's not to
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: call this podcast episode. Make a note of that. Ar
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: all right. The book is like you can buy the
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: book right now, right now, just buy it'll shift you
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: the next day or everywhere books are sold. Everywhere books
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: are sold. Tell people how to find you? Are you
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: do you do social media? Yeah? I do? Uh my
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: kids think I'm not very good at it. But I'm
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: on Twitter. I'm on because of Karan. I'm on Instagram.
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: Uh so on Instagram, I'm m w punk that's pun
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 1: k E. And on Twitter I'm m punk p U
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: and K. And the book is called the book is
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: called Ridgeline. And you can go ask your local bookstore,
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: Amazon and Barnes. My mom's husband, Um calls Books and Nobles,
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble. What if you want to listen to it?
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: There is a great audio version. I did not. I
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: read a little. I read the historical notes at the end.
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: Who they hire to read a soap opera actor, A
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: great guy. I love this. I love this. Uh that
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: this person does it. That the person who reads this
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: book is is a Lakota named Tatanka Means. He's the
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: son of Russell Means, and he's from American Indian Movement,
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: and he is a he is a Native American actor
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: and uh and does a great job reading it. And
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: so yeah, there's the audiobook version that did you try
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 1: to read it? The wouldn't let you. I did not.
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 1: I didn't think I would be very good at at
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: reading the dialogue and things like that. I mean to
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: be one thing, to read a nonfiction book. And I
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 1: read the historical notes at the end, like I said,
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: And I can do that, but I don't think i'd
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: be very good at at like giving the right intonation
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: to the arguments. They also and this is kind of
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 1: interesting the parts of the book that are with the
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: character of Francis Grammont, which are in the book written
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 1: as journal entries. They hired a a a woman actor
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: to read those parts, so it actually works out. I think.
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 1: I think it's a good audio book. Um, I didn't
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: get to read my first books. And then they sold
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: my they sold my audio rights. Random House sold from
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 1: my Buffalo book. They sold my audio rights. This thing
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: I think it's called Brilliance Audio, which weirdly was, um
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: not far from where I grew up. I think whatever
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: the hell they were called. They did a lot of audio.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: They hired some soul popera guy to do it. I
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: got those I remember getting that thing in the mail
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: and putting it in and the second the second that
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: guy opened his mouth, I couldn't get across the room.
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 1: I couldn't get across the living room. Past turned off.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: I was like, that's not how it sounds. That's stuff
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 1: that's personal. They had that they had ten years, They
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: had the audio rights for ten years. Oh man. So
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: at the end of that ten years, Um, my publisher
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: got back my audio rights and I got to go
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: down and read my own damn book. That's that's a
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 1: good thing for that for for your books, in particular,
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: it's so much your voice that I think it'd be
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: really hard to have somebody else do it. Yeah, it
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: was real, real painful. But I'm glad you're happy with it. Yeah. No,
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: it's a good it's a good audio book. I mean,
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: I uh, people have the choice if they prefer their
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: books in audio form. It's it's there, okay, the ridge
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: Line saying no article Ridge Line, the novel Michael Punk
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: and again Punk with the E on the end. Yes, right,
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: thank you. Can I tell you one final story? Yes.
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: I grew up in South Dakota, and I took great
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: pride in like the history of Deadwood and the western
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: part of the state. When I was a kid, read
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: all the books. I knew all the figures. And when
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: it's college, whenever we would like take a shot at
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: a bar or something, you gotta say it cheers, right,
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: i'dowas cheers to Hugh Glass, because then it allowed me,
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: like a couple of minutes to tell the story of
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: Hugh Glass, which is just one of my favorite story.
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: A lot of girls like that. I already had my wife, no,
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: but I'd get you entertained with this cool story that
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: was like my story. It was like my story, right,
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 1: And then the movie came out and no, longer. Can
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: I give that toast to be so you robbed it
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: from I'll buy you a beer to western give me
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: something new stories entertained folks will come up with some
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: maybe into Portuguese philips or something else. Yeah, like here's
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: the Portuguese film. Well his grandson. Who knows how many
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: locals in what northern Wyoming you robbed of the ridge
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: Line story? Now when they're taking a shot at a bar,
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 1: they have this couple of minutes to sort of tell
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: the Fetterman battle. Here's the apologies to any of those
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: people I have. I have a feeling though that the
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: most Wyomings will like this story being told. I'm going
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: to start a new segment called Spencer's pick Up on
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: pickup Advice, which do you see? Um? Quickly, speaking of movies,
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: is this going to be turned into a cinematic I
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: hope so. We have optioned it to the same company,
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: Anonymous Content that optioned and produced The Revenant. Uh so
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: they are great filmmaking company. They have optioned it. We're
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: looking at it initially more as a scripted series. I
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: think story this story is is too big, or you
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: could do it as as a feature film, and I
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: can imagine a good one, but I would love to
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: have the opportunity to tell it in an even longer
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: form of a scripted series. I'll tell you, John Lockery
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: is quote last time you were here, I know I didn't. Well,
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, I think it is. Remind me, um,
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: having your book made into a movie is like watching
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: the ox and turned into a bullion cube. It is
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: a It is a collaborative process, and you better be
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: ready for that when you signed the option check. Like
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: that a little square. I have hired higher hopes than
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: that you can do a lot with a series. That's true.
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: I think you can well. And there's so many great
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: there's so much great storytelling being done through scripted series today.
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: That jealous. I just said that because I'm jealous. I'm
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: trying to make myself filled. I want to have some
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: wild West movies. Maybe I got to read a wild West,
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: but you gotta write that. Um. All right, Michael Punk,
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming on. Everybody, go get
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: a ridge line. I know we talked, we told the
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 1: whole story. We didn't even we didn't because it takes
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: twenty hours to read a book, right it does? Yeah? Me,
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: So you don't know. Crap. Yeah, I'm listening to this
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 1: at twenty two later hours ahead, folks. All Right, so
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: you'll write another book and come back and I don't know,
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 1: two years, I would love to, Okay, standing standing invite,
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: all right, thank you for that, so that that'll motivate you.
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: I will. That is a big motivator. Thanks, thank you,
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: all right, thank you,